Court Stiff Arms Sierra Club in Gas Docks Ruling

Court rules Dominion has authority to export natural gas

On Friday, the Court of Special Appeals of Maryland issued its opinion and ruling, which affirmed a Calvert Circuit Court judgment that the agreement was unambiguous, permitted Dominion to expand its operations and could include exportation. The Sierra Club had appealed the circuit court’s ruling in a declaratory judgment filed by Dominion Cove Point.

In 2005, when Dominion sought to expand its Cove Point terminal operations to meet rising domestic natural gas demand, the company, the Sierra Club and the Maryland Conservation Council negotiated an agreement that would replace, in its entirety, all previous agreements and understandings regarding the use of Cove Point.

With Dominion Cove Point’s proposed $3.8 billion liquefied natural gas exportation project (currently under review by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and in the permitting process with several federal and state agencies), the Sierra Club was challenging Dominion’s claim that the agreement between the two parties restricting the use of the Cove Point terminal permits exporting natural gas.
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The appeals court also reviewed the agreement’s language to determine what it “expresses as the parties’ intent” and determined “we will not engage in selective interpretation in order to craft an agreement that Sierra Club now wishes it had drafted in 2005.”

The legal equivalent of telling the Sierra Club to measure twice, cut once.  They never foresaw the possibility that gas would be so abundant we would be in the position to export it rather than importing it.

Dominion still needs approval from FERC, the Maryland Public Service Commission and other permitting and approval agencies before the project can move forward.

Time to get off the pot, and start exporting natural gas; it's better for the environment than coal, and is substantially easing the problems of energy prices.  I'd rather see nuclear over coal and gas, but if your going to insist we burn fossils for energy (wind and solar making negligible contributions) we might as well use gas.