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Joseph Majkut: Good morning. The election results in the United States of last week portend perhaps a new era in how the U.S. will build energy infrastructure at the incoming second. Trump administration wants to put a real emphasis not just on deregulation, but on reforming the regulatory state to make it easier for businesses to invest, for energy to be developed and for the U.S. to have a dominant position in global energy markets. But how real or how much are they going to be able to accomplish in the face of what is still a proceduralist society? In many ways, litigation can spoil even the highest aims. We want to talk about this issue today with a panel of experts dialing in on one particular case to think through what is that issue when we think about deregulation? What is that issue when we think about the prospects of building infrastructure in the future? And moreover, how should the U.S. be viewed commercially and politically around the world as we grow and mature as an energy exporter? I'm really, really pleased that we're joined by this group today to help us wade through what are complex and challenging legal, technical, and geopolitical issues because we have so much to talk about. I want to skip a panel introduction and just get right into it. So, excuse me.
I feel like we're also at a moment of, there's a lot of breaking news over the summer projects that were planned and had been approved. LNG facility, LNG export facilities had their licenses stalled because of an environmental rule issue and procedural mistake that FERC had made. Christie, you come from Clearview Energy Partners. You're a keen observer of FERC and of the energy system here in the United States. Can you start us off with an explanation at a sort of medium level of what happened procedurally, and then I'd like to talk a little bit about where we are today.
Christine Tezak: Okay. Well, back in August of 2021, the DC circuit found that FERC's environmental analysis underpinning the certificate authorization for both Rio Grande LNG and Texas LNG were flawed, and they remanded them to the commission without vacating the underlying authorization.
Therefore, the license was still good, if you will, and both companies could move forward. But FERC had to address the issues raised by the court. It took FERC about not quite two years to do that, and they deviated a bit from certainly what I'm on the record as having expected. I expected them to do some sort of supplemental formal environmental review to supplement the previously executed environmental impact statements in order to meet the court's remand. Instead, what they did is they issued a flurry of data requests to both sponsors, and those data responses were provided for comment, comments were received, and then the commission issued an order on remand directly without revising formally its prior environmental assessments, and the project opponents appealed. And then this August, three years later, the DC circuit found that that was procedurally infirm and the court remanded and vacated the authorizations. So technically the court has made a decision that says these licenses are no longer valid.
However, because of where we are posturally before the court, the license has not lost its validity because the project sponsor has requested rehearing of the panel and rehearing before the entire court.
Joseph Majkut: So let me see if I can put this in plain language. I'm sorry for that, but we've got a project that has been approved by FERC and DOE.
Christine Tezak: Under construction in the case of Rio. Yeah.
Joseph Majkut: And then elements of this facility are under construction. Opponents of the project have said that one of the environmental reviews was too hasty or otherwise flawed, sued, and then that permit was the court decided that permit needed to be vacated, sent back to FERC for a reevaluation. Right. What are the statutes under which this decision was made? Because I think many people in the audience, they see this and they convolute with the other policy elements and kinds of approvals we have in the U.S. for export facilities. Here, I'm thinking the Biden administration's pause. So can you help us understand and really delineate what are the underlying legal authorities that are being argued over here?
Christine Tezak: Sure. Well, under section three of the Natural Gas Act, the Department of Energy delegates the environment and safety reviews for LNG export Terminals to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. And therefore FERC does that legwork and then the Department of Energy on its own subsequently, which is the subject of the pause, decides whether or not it's appropriate to export the gas from the United States to free trade agreement and non-free trade agreement partners. Section three says that we presume it's in the interest to export to free trade agreement partners. There's an incremental process for non-free trade agreement partners, and that's what's the subject of the pause. In FE'S case, the flaws that the DC circuit identified were pursuant to the National Environmental Policy Act, which is the underpinning of the environmental review and also the Administrative Procedure Act and how a particular agency's execution of its responsibilities under NEPA, whether or not it follows the general procedures for federal reviews.
Joseph Majkut: Nothing I can think about wanting to talk about more on a Thursday morning than administrative procedure and the National Environmental Protection Act. Kyle, maybe I can bring you into the conversation. You are an environmental attorney, you're partner of Venice Feldman, you're also a senior, associate at CSIS. Thank you so much for your contributions. Can you help us wade through, I don't want to litigate the facts of the case, but just help us get an understanding of about where we are legally and what your sense of the sort of pacing of the arguments around this issue would be. And then I want to talk about breaking news.
Kyle Danish: Sure, sure. Yeah. So it's important to recognize, this is chapter two in this saga, right? I mean, this started in 2016. They got through this whole proceeding first with one panel of the DC circuit, which just remanded it and said, look, we think you missed something in your NEPA review. This new panel after they went back and did this review, said, we don't like what you did the second time. And we think the deficiencies are so serious that we're not only remanding this back to you but actually vacating the order. So this is now going to come back to FERC to revisit this review, but in the meantime, the parties involved the Rio Grande, LNG and Texas LNG have, as Christie said, requested a rehearing by this panel or a rehearing on banc by the entire, all judges active on the DC circuit. Meanwhile, other decisions are coming down that could affect things. I think it's helpful to say a little bit about precisely the problem that this second panel found and the remedy they provided.
Joseph Majkut: I would love to hear that. Yes.
Kyle Danish: So under NEPA generally requires this sort of searching hard look review of the environmental and socioeconomic impacts of a major project that the federal government is approving over time. There have been executive orders and other actions that have sort of filled in what's supposed to happen in that review. One of those was an executive order that said that agencies, as part of their NEPA review, should do an environmental justice review
Just to look at disadvantaged populations, socioeconomic, racial that could be affected by the project. And look at that. Now, this is supposed to be, as Christie said, this is a procedural statute. There's nothing about the in a NEPA review that requires, there's no threshold that says, oh, and if you find that you have to deny the authorization, it's a procedure that's involved in providing the authorization. Sometimes the FERC will say, oh, these impacts are so severe, we really can't authorize it. But they're not required to do that on the basis of the NEPA review. And here in the environmental justice analysis, the first time they looked at a sort of two mile radius around the project, but they acknowledged that there were impacts beyond that. The first panel said, we're sending that back. Explain why you only looked in two miles in this two mile radius on remand. They did a bigger review. They looked at a 50 kilometer radius. Now they found that there would be some disproportionate impacts on EJ communities, but the only significant impacts they found were in that immediate vicinity and were visual impacts. Now, they collected a lot of data in that process, but as Christie said, the violation found by this second panel was, oh, you should have issued a supplemental environmental impact statement, essentially gone through the whole process again, and just that procedural violation formed the basis of the bulk of this decision to both remand and vacate. Now, they didn't even seemingly consider whether doing this new analysis would cause FERC to deny the project.
It was really a procedural misstep, and yet they both remanded it on the basis of that and took this further action of vacating the authorization. So now here we are eight years later and we're effectively back at step one unless a rehearing of this case leads to a different result. So it's a pretty severe remedy for what seems like it's been called a sort of a footfall in the procedural aspect.
Christine Tezak: Well, the footfalls have been a little bit something that's been manifesting itself in different decisions at the DC circuit, the FERC had a major footfall, if you will, in a, it wasn't a NEPA case, but it was a case related to the formation of rates for oil and natural gas liquids, pipelines, and it was similar. You changed your point of view. You didn't put it out for comment. You're vacated.
And that is part of, I think, the trend we have seen with the courts becoming more conservative, small C, more textual.
Very specific in terms of agency execution. And in some ways I would say that the foot faulting that we saw in Rio Grande, LNG in the vacated order for the regional energy access expansion for Transco and for the five-year index are similar in that there was an issue you needed to deal with, you didn't deal with it. And one of the things that they faulted, and we can get into the nuances of where exactly the line falls on whether or not the EJ analysis needs judicial review, but the point was is in the court's opinion, FERC changed its analysis and didn't put that revised analysis out for comment. And so it's a very procedural slap on the wrist.
In this case, it has very dramatic consequences.
Joseph Majkut: Well, let me ask first about those consequences because we're at a moment where we need to build a lot of energy infrastructure. I mean, the United States has a lot of supply that we want to see go abroad. We need to build a lot of other kinds of infrastructure here. I'm thinking electricity transmission with FERC on the mind, linear pipelines for natural gas, for hydrogen, for CCS. So without asking too much of your legal judgment, should a casual observer see this trend in the courts and think, oh, the procedural issues could get in the way of all that kind of building. Is there more amplification here rather that could come?
Kyle Danish: I mean, I think it's a concern, right? I mean, I think if you look at, there is a little bit of a split, I think among different circuits about the significance of this sort of misstep and the procedure. There's a sort of leading case called Allied Signal that says that when there is this sort of procedural misstep, you're supposed to look at, whether essentially evaluate whether fixing the procedural misstep could lead to a different decision on the authorization, and also consider the consequences to the activity of stopping it and vacating it when the agency could come back and actually approve it. Here, it looks like they looked at that first step mostly as sort of like there's just a lot of volume of new data you did, but not without much consideration about whether even if they considered that volume of data, they would've rejected the authorization. Right? So again, sorry to get within the sort of, to answer your question, I think there's a split in the way courts are looking at this, and this might be changed in some way, and there's some other cases out there that I think we're going to talk about that may make major changes to this whole area.
Joseph Majkut: Well, this is exactly what I wanted to go to next. So NEPA, the National Environmental Protection Act, I don't know actually as a point of order.
Kyle Danish: National Environmental Policy Act.
Joseph Majkut: Excuse me, National Environmental Policy Act. I don't know as a point whether Congress intended for disturbed view sheds to be part of the consideration when we were doing environmental reviews or environmental impact statements over new infrastructure. So maybe I'd welcome your thoughts on that particularly, but then also this past Tuesday, the ruling in the case Marin Audubon Society versus the FAA, seems like the courts are saying NEPA needs to be applied differently than it has been thus far. Can you give us a sort of Kyle, maybe a 10,000 foot view on that ruling and what's at issue there?
Kyle Danish: 10,000 foot is the right analogy here. It was against the FAA. So in short, this was, I would say, an ordinary challenge to a NEPA action. But it took an interesting turn when the chief judge, senior judge of the DC Circuit, Judge Randolph and another panelist said, essentially said there was sort of a claim that the agency hadn't followed requirements for NEPA within the Council on Environmental Qualities regulations about how agencies are supposed to implement NEPA. And essentially the majority led by Randolph said, you know what? There's nothing in NEPA that tells, that says the Council on Environmental Quality is supposed to make regulations that bind all the other agencies and how they implement NEPA. So a violation of the CEQ regulations is not a basis for invalidating the NEPA action. Those just should be advisory, which would have some interesting implications in this particular case because what we were talking about with the EJ analysis came from executive orders. So this has created a bit of chaos in understanding the future of NEPA implementation across federal agencies. This was not something that was a claim raised by the-
Christine Tezak: Either party.
Kyle Danish: Either party. So it was a bit of a shock, and that sometimes is not something that can carry forward. So they expect requests for rehearing expect some challenge to the validity of this decision.
Joseph Majkut: Of the circuit court decision.
Kyle Danish: Of the circuit court decision, whether it really can be founded on something that wasn't claimed by either of the parties. So other judges may revisit this.
Christine Tezak: Well, I think that's going to be interesting, but I think what's important is that even if the decision doesn't stand necessarily in Marin Audubon, this is a small community of very talented lawyers and they're going to waste no time in applying it in as an affirmative defense to protect the agency's decision. And since we've seen weaponization being well employed by both sides, I can envision that there's a question of, well, you don't have any regulation at all. So how can your NEPA review be any good? There's certainly going to be a question now of there was a certain amount of case law that relied on the assumption that the regulations had some sort of validity from CEQ and that they were binding on agencies and agencies had to be in line with them. But in practice, that hasn't always been the case. For example, the CEQ has been much more forward-leaning on greenhouse gas assessments and to date, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has resolutely said, we can't make a significance determination unless it's not significant in a very small project.
So there has been this differentiation between the CEQ and a particular agency that's going to persist and will no longer be available, I think to project opponents to say, well, the agency is acting differently than CEQ recommended. Now it's really clear that it's likely going to be guidance unless and until Congress defines it otherwise. So in some ways what we've seen is a narrowing of the field of play over what can be litigated under NEPA, but I think it would be a very big leap to suggest that NEPA reviews in their entirety suddenly don't have any litigation threats.
Kyle Danish: No, no, I agree with you on that, Christie. I think it's interesting though. It seems to me if in a scenario where these regulations are really not binding in some way, now we're back a little bit into the implications of the Loper Bright case, overturning the Chevron doctrine, because in this scenario, and again, this is we're all very in, you know, projecting. The agencies would in a NEPA action would be interpreting the NEPA statute itself. They'd be like, this is what we think we need to do to carry out NEPA. And the NEPA statute is not a hugely detailed statute.
So this would be agency interpretation of the statute, and courts would now have really sort of broader grounds to say, that's great, but by the way that we interpret the statute and we're not going to defer to how you decided to do this. So it opens up, I think as Christie said, sort of vast new areas for sort of legal wrangling, which could be better or worse for projects.
Joseph Majkut: I mean, in that context that legal wrangling actually provides a lot of uncertainty for commercial operators, even if eventually you may find a world where NEPA reviews end up being less onerous as we sort of sort this out, and courts have to make decisions, it just takes time. Lawyers got to argue, courts need to think about these things. Cases get brought up to higher and higher levels. So the idea that there might be a lot of reform here, I can understand why people in the business community might get excited, a lot of friends in the world who want to see faster investment, but that's not necessarily going to be the case in the next few years. Am I just sort of right to have that impression?
Kyle Danish: I think that's right. I mean, I think we do have to watch the fate of this particular decision. I mean, I think it's going to get.
Christine Tezak: Well, yeah, this decision, and I think the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition case up at the Supreme Court could make life a lot clearer in some ways, because the primary argument, in that case, is that an agency is not obligated to scope their leap of review beyond the jurisdiction that they have. So questions like environmental justice, like the overarching greenhouse gas strategy of the Biden administration could be overcome by that decision, which we'll have by the middle of next year. And certainly, a narrowing of NEPA review to the jurisdiction of the agencies involved would be very consistent with where the Trump administration was in its first term and certainly where we expected them to go if they were successful in being elected. So I think that what we'll see, in some ways, the cabining of the NEPA review already looked like it was happening. And so this may provide some guidance in terms of where the walls of the arena are, but I think that what exactly guidance from an agency or not an agency from a White House office such as the council and environmental quality, how that should be interpreted, that's going to take some time to play out. That's new case law now.
Joseph Majkut: Right. Really thank you both for helping to clarify this. I mean for external-
Christine Tezak: That was clarifying?
Joseph Majkut: Yeah, well, it is for external observers, it can just be hard. It's hard to track everything. And it's hard, I think to understand particularly for a lot of our global audience, what are all these details.
Kyle Danish: And if I may just before pivoting, let's say the National Environmental Policy Act is a very important statute. It's been very influential, and it's actually a model worldwide for environmental impact statements, which I think most companies welcome the opportunity to do feel that it shapes their operations and their construction and their development in very important ways. So I think it's something to take seriously. I don't think people want to see NEPA or environmental impact statements go away, but I think having more understanding of their reasonable boundaries would be very helpful.
Joseph Majkut: And it seems like the limited scope of the original statute actually has just caught, but it's generality has caused out of frustration or necessity or whatever. People have tried to make larger policy arguments within the NEPA framework about greenhouse gas intensity and how that should be evaluated or whatever. And it seems like that, I mean very evidently this is now a matter of grave legal concern, but why is it something for CSIS, right? Because I mean, I understand there's commercial realities here and there's a lot of money at play, and that's why we have a legal system to sort of adjudicate that stuff. But from the why I'm interested in this, this case was important for this. Now geopolitically very important industry, and that is LNG exports. I mean, we've written a lot here over the last few years on how the rise of the U.S. now becoming the largest LNG exporter globally has altered the geopolitics of European energy supply. It's changing energy security considerations in Asian Pacific region.
And it is kind of is a market reality, but a funny market. If I can draw your attention to the board actually and gratefulness to another senior associate of ours, Leslie Palti Guzman, for supplying the background graphic. I mean, you're talking about fewer than a dozen facilities providing the largest export capacity in the world. All of 'em are located in the Gulf. And when one or two is disrupted, say you have a mechanical failure as we had in the case of the Freeport facility, or you have a procedural delay, which regardless of the intentions of our next administration, these are still laws of the land and they will happen. There are market impacts here that we want to consider and they reverberate globally. Emily, you're from Rystad. You're a top analyst in gas issues. Can you kind of give us a sense of the scale and scope of these sort of procedural the impacts of these procedural cases on global markets and domestic gas markets as well, by the way?
Emily McClain: Sure, yeah. I'll try to keep it quick, but I mean it really is a topic that we could discuss for an hour at minimum. So just taking this out long-term where the U.S. is planning to go for supporting global LNG supply, well global LNG demand through supply, the U.S. will wake up about 30% of total LNG supply by 2040. It is a huge chunk of that. That supply currently exports are around 12 billion cubic feet per day. We expect that to reach over 30 BCF per day around that time. So we're talking very, very strong numbers and each individual project is adding incremental volume to that. So of course with delays, it does have an impact, not so much on the immediate term for these projects that I haven't taken FID, final investment decision or projects that will be five, six years down the road. That's a longer term story.
The Biden administration pause on new non FTA LNG approvals this year. So if I say Biden pause, that's what I'm referring to. That had implications more so on the medium term. So we didn't see spikes in say the domestic market pricing as a result of that, but we have been tracking that all year. I mean, that's been the topic top of mind all year. How is that impacting global markets? There are, to your point, Joseph projects that are under construction right now that are ramping up right now that do have immediate impact on our domestic gas market. We have operators on the upstream space that are waiting for those projects to come online that'll add 1, 2, 3, BCF per day. So it really is a domino effect, if you will, between upstream, midstream and downstream, and then ultimately the customers that receive that gasp. So yeah, this example with Rio Grande and Texas LNG has considerable consequences on the long-term, but also just how the U.S. is viewed as a reliable supplier really. I'll just pause there, but there's a lot we can unpack here.
Joseph Majkut: Great. In fact, I'm glad you brought us there. Maybe we can bring Kunro into the conversation. Kunro is a visiting fellow here in our program at CSIS. He and I have collaborated a lot on global LNG issues. Kunro, I'd love to hear your thoughts on how buying countries buying firms see uncertainty in U.S. export capacity, whether that comes legally or politically in the context of us being a reliable exporter.
Kunro Irié: Thank you, Joseph. I think there is no doubt that the U.S. has been seen as a very reliable supplier. I mean since it began its major exports restarting its major exports since the last decade, projects have actually started up and are, despite the hiccup, occasional hiccups that you have mentioned have operated finally, and they are now new other projects like that.
So I think that in general, that view hasn't had changed in the but for a while. But I think the reason, especially the past year, as Emily mentioned there is you have the Biden LNG pause, which is many around the world see it as a political that it has some hint of political aspect to it. And then I think Kyle mentioned earlier, but there was the Chevron deference that has been overruled by the Supreme Court, which as an overall legal uncertainty, I think we in the U.S. are also still trying to grapple with what that means for us. So there is this evolving addition to this risk of what is this U.S. LNG regulatory system? So it'll be no, and now with the upcoming changes of the administration, which is now coming, I think there is a real sense of what's going on in the United States. Is it safe? What do we have to expect? What do we have to take care when we make those investment decisions? So if we want to sustain a healthy investment environment, especially for foreign investments, I think it's important that we restore this clarity, and especially for stakeholders and project owners, they should really go back with relevant agencies and stakeholders and really look back at their applications and do what they have to do and if necessary, perhaps take a more conservative approach.
Joseph Majkut: Well, here, I think the sense of scale is actually quite helpful. So we were talking just before we started the broadcast at issue in the cases we started our discussion on, it's about 30 million tons a year of export capacity against a market that's presently 400 million tons annually. Is that about right?
Kunro Irié: As of now, yeah.
Joseph Majkut: So you're talking about something that is, I don't want to make a math mistake, but between five and 10% of the current today's global marketplace. When you think about the expansion that we expect to see over the next few years, it seems like one, two facilities end up being pretty important for the outlooks that I'm hearing from Emily. Is that correct, Emily?
Emily McClain: I think I would just, and I'm not going to go into the math either, but I would just clarify that's specific to the combined Rio Grande project, Texas LNG. You're looking at over 32 million tons of projects. Now, the operators have their stated timelines for when they anticipate those projects to come online. Rystad Energy has our own house view. So I'm just going to give the, 2030 is roughly when we see all those projects starting up. There's a timing component to the ramp up of the facilities. But if we just look at the numbers for 2030, we're now exceeding that 400 million tons that we are at today and potentially seeing in excess of 600 tons. So that number is closer to four to 5% of contribution from Rio Grande and Texas LNG. It's still a lot. It's still obviously very meaningful in terms of the global supply and demand balance. So it does matter, I think. I know we were all following the elections and I often heard the phrase over and over, it's a numbers game. Well, obviously it's a numbers game, and I think the same with LNG. It is a timing game, the numbers, it is a timing game. So getting the timing right is critical for like I mentioned the developers, but also the upstream operators, EMP companies that are waiting for this outlet and then the buyers that will also be in need or in demand for that. One more thing to add that I think is kind of interesting that we've watched throughout the year, especially since this Biden's pause on LNG was announced at the beginning of the year. We've watched the transition of the global LNG supply throughout the year, and that's because of some of these projects being delayed.
Mid-year or really early in the year, we realized there will be probably a one to two year delay in the projects that are sitting under the pause. What does that mean on global markets? Well, I gave you the numbers on the impact for long-term by 2030, seeing over 600 million tons. But if we walk back to the beginning of this year, the LNG supply glut was all the talk in the medium term. There was this supply glut of potentially exceeding five plus BCF per day. And with this pause, ironically enough, if it was a political move, I won't go into that, but if it was related to that, it is ironic that it's actually improved the balances. Long-term, we see more of a healthy balance, meaning less oversupply, and there's still a cushion of two to three BCF per day beyond 2028 that will support the global markets. It comes back to pricing where you have almost everyone's looking for the goldilock scenario where you have adequate pricing, not too much, not too little adequate timing, not too much, not too many delays, not too many advances really. So I think it'll be interesting to see how these two projects as being the example that they've been made, how they play out and how that impacts regulations and environmental assessment.
Joseph Majkut: So I could see, thank you. Actually, it's really helpful because the timing of the market is so interesting over the last few years. It's been very tight observers were saying, well, in the coming five years, we might actually have too much global LNG compared to what demand looks like. And so there might be some softening of that imbalance. And I understand that in being very important for today's market conditions, the market conditions over the next few years, how much does that affect long-term planning when we're thinking about the role that LNG is going to play in the global energy system in the 2030s, right? Are we going to continue to see large expansion? Are the uncertainties here provoking concerns for energy planners abroad as they look at gas as an energy security tool or an industrial input around the world? Open to Emily or Kunro on that point.
Emily McClain: Yeah, thanks Joseph. I'll just jump on this real quick, but I have been around the world this year and it's been interesting getting perspectives from our clients and market participants. And I will say, from my view, I know this is subjective and just based on what I've experienced this year, but yes, the concern is real. I will also say with the upcoming administration next year, I think some of those concerns will be eased because of the agenda and the policy that the Trump administration has been pushing the past year plus. I think some of those concerns are eased around medium long-term support for gas and LNG infrastructure, gas and LNG as an industry. So I think that's something to keep in mind as far as the U.S. goes and being a supplier reliable supplier, I don't think that was to the point where it was limiting investment. It was just clouding this year, I would say. And what we see the outcome from the LNG pause, the Biden administration pause and how if that is lifted and when that will definitely send signals to the market now in the next four years, hopefully there's support for LNG and LNG infrastructure and then beyond, but we'll see how that plays out.
Joseph Majkut: Yeah, it seems like it also may send geopolitical signals as well, right? We're going to try and make this easy so that countries when they're putting together their plans can see LNG as a hedge against uncertainty as an energy security tool or as a primary energy source.
Christine Tezak: It's a hedge against tariffs.
Joseph Majkut: As a hedge against tariffs. Yeah, that's right. I'm really grateful that we've had a chance to talk about this stuff. As I said, at the top is complex and at every vector. And so having you all here to help see clarity has been at least helpful for me and I know likely for our audience as well, but I'd love to close with your thoughts. Where do we think we'll be in a year or two on these same matters? The National Environmental Policy Act is not going to go away. It's being, its enforcement and its implementation is being reconsidered by the courts. Maybe starting with Kyle, what are you watching over the next few years? What's most important for our observers to keep track of?
Kyle Danish: Yeah, I'll just say, Joseph, your pivot from what do you predict to what do you watch is everything for me? I'm just going to talk about what I'm watching and dodge the prediction question. Watching a number of cases, this case that we're talking about today, mostly the City of Port Isabelle case and the seven county case that we'll talk about the scope, what is proximate for review, what's in the jurisdiction from the Supreme Court could really change how this statute is implemented by sort of narrowing the scope of what needs to be reviewed. And then this sort of blockbuster Mein Audubon case that could take CEQ regulations out of a binding position. And then we have now a Republican President house and Senate that is definitely looking at NEPA in the broader context of permitting reform. And I know they're looking at sort of what the new environment will be such as after these cases, and try to figure out what they want to do to accelerate permitting reform. So there is just a lot up in the air on the sort of shape of this law and what it means for big projects.
Joseph Majkut: Do you think when they originally wrote it, they imagined that it also would have broad geopolitical connotations, or do we overstate?
Kyle Danish: It's interesting. With this firm Van Ness Felman, Bill, Van Ness, one of the founders of the firm, was the lead staffer who really wrote NEPA. Is the story, at least this story told at our firm. And what Bill had told people is I really thought that this was going to be some really short couple page document that agencies would have to distribute with so that they would think about what they're doing on the impact on the environment. Think about the, and I don't think he ever contemplated something where there would be 2300 page environmental impact statements. So I think we have gone some far, but again, a hugely important, these projects have huge implications for communities, for the environment. We should be thankful that we live in a place where a government just doesn't sort of heedlessly plow through whole territories to do projects. But it would be good if it there were some different scope and boundaries to it, I think. Right, Christie?
Christine Tezak: Well, I think even with what we certainly at Clearview expect to be a narrower scope of NEPA going forward, even if we do get, Congress actually succeeds in codifying additional changes to NEPA, which is something they started with the Fiscal Responsibility Act. I want to highlight two things that the two of you said that I think are very important. One, having an environmental framework does underpin the social license to operate. And I think that from the people I know within the energy industry, that is something that is important and it is a framework that helps them point constructively to being responsible corporate citizens. And I think that's important. And then to your point about taking a conservative approach, I think one the things that we noticed under the first term of the Trump administration is that sponsors who were very attentive to dotting the I's and crossing the T's, are Those that were more successful in having their permits upheld in court. Because I think if the regulator is a little too relaxed, it actually becomes a responsibility of the sponsor to make sure the work is done properly because it's actually their permit. And so I think that those sponsors who take you framed it as a conservative approach, those who are more diligent will be the ones that in 2030, I think will be the most successful.
Joseph Majkut: Yeah, it's not a free for all when we are talking about changes to NEPA.
Christine Tezak: Because a whole bunch of permits got vacated and tossed around that were issued under the first term of the Trump administration. And so I think that that's something that is a useful thing that folds into the comments you were making about there are good elements to this. There are reasons to have it. And if it's executed well, then I think that you have a better commercial partner.
Joseph Majkut: Yeah, I think it is interesting to me when I think about the national challenges here, I absolutely, I mean, I fundamentally agree the right to represent your interests in court is like a foundational American thing, and those interests have to be respected. But if we kind of move to a world where smooth is fast, and it's a bit of a sort of political theory comment, but also if boundaries around NEPA, we stop making policy arguments there, we're going to have to make 'em back in Congress. And so whatever challenges we have or whatever conflicts or political interests need to be resolved, the democratic process hopefully can start applying itself rather than relying on these administrative tools, which I seem to cause surgery for everybody, or fail to represent.
Kyle Danish: This panel or this, which court do you end up in? That's the other sort of randomness.
Joseph Majkut: Yeah, totally. And so as always, we endeavor for improvement and better outcomes for everyone. And thank you all for joining our conversation today, Kunro, Emily, Kyle Christie, you're friends of the program, you’re educators of me, and it's been really a delight to talk with you this morning. So thank you. And to our audience, thank you so much for joining us today. I hope you've learned as much as I have. This is Joseph Majkut from the CSIS Energy Security and Climate Change Program, signing off.
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