Environmentalists and consumer rights advocates are suing federal energy regulators for clearing the way for construction of a major gas pipeline from Texas to Mexico.
The Sierra Club and Public Citizen filed a petition to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit challenging the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s review of the Saguaro Connector Pipeline. The pipeline is slated to be about 500 miles long, but FERC determined it only had jurisdiction over 1,000 feet of pipe on the Texas side of the southern border — and issued a certificate for that segment in February.
The groups argue that FERC should have conducted a thorough analysis of all 157 miles of pipeline that would be built in the U.S.
The agency “arbitrarily limited its environmental analysis to only 0.12 percent of the pipeline’s entire length,” said Tyson Slocum, Public Citizen’s energy program director.
