Where did that gas go for that one day, Sabal Trail? You didn’t do a very good job of demonstrating customers by dropping back to less than 2% Nom/Cap today. Did you break something? Again? Explain to us, FERC: why is this pipeline needed?
January 2018
Also, FERC, if you did your job, we wouldn’t have to draw graphs like this. The best way to do your job would be to shut down Sabal Trail. Continue reading
Here are links to the FERC-required daily informational postings of the parts of the Southeast Markets Pipeline Project (SMPP), Transco, Sabal Trail, and FSC, plus the other two big natural gas pipelines into Florida: FGT and Gulfstream. Can somebody point me at any Duke Energy Florida (DEF) power plant that is not being fed by FGT or Gulfstream, now that DEF is no longer listed by Sabal Trail as a customer? And since FSC only lists its Martin County power plant, where are all those coal plants supposedly already- or to-be-modernized?
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has a web page for Required Filers, which has a spreadsheet of Interstate Pipelines under the Natural Gas Act XLS updated 11/28/2017, but it’s incorrect, with the listing for Florida Southeast Connection going to the home page for NextEra Energy Resources. So, as usual, it’s necessary to do FERC’s job.
Informational Postings and map.
Operationally Available. Perhaps most interesting is Continue reading
Duke Energy Florida is no longer in the Customer Index in Sabal Trail’s FERC-required Informational Postings, as of January 1, 2018. Only Florida Power & Light is listed, still for 400,000 dekatherms per day. So what we’ve been saying since November appears to be true: Duke Energy Florida is no longer a Sabal Trail customer, which means there’s no excuse for Sabal Trail to have a Certificate of Convenience and Necessity, and FERC (or the D.C. Circuit Court) should revoke that permit.
Update 2018-01-05: Duke previously said it did NOT need Sabal Trail for the Crystal River power plant Duke is building, and in any case it could get the gas from Gulfstream or FGT if Sabal Trail failed, then Duke bought part of Sabal Trail, then Sabal Trail’s uncommitted capacity dropped by the same amount Duke was supposedly wanting, and now Duke is missing from Sabal Trail’s customer list. Plus most of Duke Energy Florida’s operational gas-fired power plants are being fed by FGT or Gulfstream, and apparently none from Sabal Trail.
Yet Sabal Trail today just ramped up nominated capacity above operationally available capacity. Where’s that gas going, Sabal Trail? Continue reading
FERC, if it follows its own rules, should reject the DSEIS, stop Sabal Trail, and revoke its permit, says a motion filed today with FERC by Suwannee Riverkeeper.
Followup blog posts will feature major sections and arguments from these 20 pages with their 93 footnotes. The basic arguments are summarized on the first page:
WWALS argues that no SEIS can be complete without accounting for GHG from Liquid Natural Gas (“LNG”) exports, nor without comparing natural gas to solar power, according to precedents already set by FPL, FERC, and others, which also reopen the whole basis of the FERC 2016 Order.
FERC may not care, but the D.C. Circuit Court may, or candidates for office, or the voting public.
-jsq, John S. Quarterman, Suwannee RIVERKEEPER®
You can join this fun and work by becoming a WWALS member today!
Sure you didn’t break something, Sabal Trail? Or did you lose one of your only two admitted customers? If not, why are you still only shipping less than 10% of your stated capacity six weeks after you went to zero for seventeen days? And how can FERC justify eminent domain for taking people’s land and risking our water for a pipeline your own figures persuasively now argue is not needed?
Remember, on November 14, the same day Sabal Trail’s gas dropped to zero, its uncommitted capacity also dropped by 300,000 Dekatherms per day, which is exactly the same as what Duke Energy Florida said it would buy, with “Contract Primary Term Expiration Date” of “10/15/2017.” That’s thirty days before the gas stopped flowing on November 14, 2017. And there’s been no change in Sabal Trail’s uncommitted capacity since then.
If you like hearing about outings and advocacy so you can participagte, please contact the FCC today to oppose their vote tomorrow that would greatly damage the open Internet we all use to communicate and organize.
Please call or email the three Commissioners who favor this unfortunate Order:
You can also file comments, which are publicly visible, and thus may help get others to call or write the FCC.
To submit a written comment:
Below is the letter I filed with the FCC today, confirmation number 20171213002539051; or see PDF.
It’s not just GE and Siemens that are “experiencing disruption of unprecedented scope and speed,” power plant builder Fluor finds “The challenges we have experienced over the last two years on gas-fired power projects are inconsistent with the results we have historically achieved.” Maybe you should have bet on sun and wind power, Fluor, Siemens, and GE, instead of fracked methane and nukes.
Photo: Fluor web page on Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant
Copenhaver Construction, Inc., 8 August 2017,
Problems on three gas-fired power plant projects with fixed-price contracts forced Dallas-based Fluor Corp. to book a $124-million charge in 2017’s second quarter.
CEO David. T. Seaton says Continue reading
Sabal Trail apparently doesn’t know cattle.
The pipeline company claimed they know restoration, but that’s not what the ground looks like now, with sparse vegetation and erosion. They say they love wildlife, but they drove off a heron and who knows what else. They’re driving down property values. What are those bubbles? Which milepoint is which, anyway? Janet Barrow lives in Marion County, but she also reports on Citrus County. For 54 pages, with a summation.
For the rest of FERC Accession Number 20171120-5026, “Comment of Janet L Barrow under CP15-17, et. al.; A Citizen’s Supplemental Information Regarding Sabal Trail’s October, 2017 Monthly Report” on the WWALS website, follow this link.
-jsq, John S. Quarterman, Suwannee RIVERKEEPER®
You can join this fun and work by becoming a WWALS member today!
EPA doesn’t even remember when it sent its own greenhouse gas (GHG) comments to FERC, forgets that it already told FERC nevermind, and now says, despite copious evidence filed by Senators, professors, Riverkeepers, and environmental organizations from multiple states as far away as Colorado, that FERC’s incorrect and inadequate Draft Supplementary Environmental Impact Statemen (FSEIS) rates “Lack of Objections or “LO””.
This latest EPA letter is dated November 20, 2017,
but FERC didn’t inform intervenors about it until today, two weeks later.
The EPA letter claims:
The EPA commented on the FEIS on January 25, 2016. In those comments the EPA provided several recommendations including that the FERC consider a detailed evaluation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in future analyses.
Yet FERC’s Docket CP15-17 shows no comment by EPA in January 2016. It does show this same G. Alan Farmer, Director, Resource Conservation and Restoration Division, EPA, wrote a letter to FERC filed 1 December 2015 as Accession Number 20171201-0034 (see also WWALS blog post), in which he said nothing I can see about greenhouse gases, but he did basically say “nevermind” to EPA’s extensive letter of October 26, 2015, filed as Accession Number 0151102-0219 (clean text on the WWALS website), which October letter did include: Continue reading
Not just one week anymore, more than two weeks: for seventeen days or more than half a month Sabal Trail shipped no gas, and it’s at less than ten percent of its stated operational capacity today.
Sabal Trail Operationally Available and Nominated Capacity, 2017-06-14 to 2017-12-02, graphed by WWALS from Sabal Trail’s FERC-required online reports.
Also, on October 30th Sabal Trail went down to 14 Million Dekatherms a day (MDTH/day) nominated capacity out of 779 MDTH/day operationally available capacity.
Both that and the drop to zero on December November 14th were shortly after Sabal Trail
ramped up nominated capacity.
Did you bust something, Sabal Trail? Continue reading