Credit: (AP Photo/Jim Mone File)

WASHINGTON — Pipelines and electric transmission lines that cross from Mexico or Canada and into the U.S. would undergo less environmental scrutiny than current law requires under legislation that cleared the House and is pending in the Senate.

Four New Jersey lawmakers — Reps. Jeff Van Drew (R-2nd), Chris Smith (R-4th), Josh Gottheimer (D-5th) and Tom Kean Jr. (R-7th) — voted for the bill, a priority of Republicans from oil-rich states like North Dakota.

Rep. Frank Pallone (D-6th) led opposition for Democrats against the bill, which he said would “gut the federal government’s ability to review the environmental impact of oil and gas pipelines that cross into Canada and Mexico.”

The bill would accelerate the pace oil and fossil gas pipelines and transmission projects can be built, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said in its analysis of the legislation.

By eliminating the requirement for energy companies to get presidential approval when they want to build across U.S. borders, the bill revived a national political debate over international energy projects, in particular the defunct Keystone XL pipeline.

On his first day in office, Jan. 20, 2021, former President Joe Biden issued an executive order blocked that project, a leg of a pipeline network that would have brought unrefined petroleum from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico for processing and export. The company that wanted to build the pipeline canceled the project in June 2021.

Debate over the now-mothballed project dominated the energy politics of the Obama administration and lingers still.

Energy & Environment

“We need a cross-border permitting process that is transparent, predictable, and durable, a process that can’t be undone with the stroke of a pen,” Republican congresswoman Julie Fedorchak, the lone member who represents North Dakota in the House, said during floor debate on the bill.

Under the legislation, whoever sits in the Oval Office would no longer be able to nix or approve international energy projects. Instead, the authority to issue oil and gas pipeline permits would reside with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission while the Energy Department would oversee transmission sites.

Spokespeople for Van Drew, Smith, Gottheimer and Kean did not respond to requests for comment.

The bill narrows the environmental review the U.S. government would conduct to the section of a project “located within 1,000 feet” of the border.

“The way this bill is tailored, there would be basically no review, other than, I think, for 1,000 feet, or something, into the other country,” Pallone said.

If there were interest to build a new Canadian project into the U.S., the bruised relationship between both nations could complicate its completion, Pallone said. “There is no reason to believe in any way that the Canadians are looking to work with us to build a pipeline and export more fossil fuels to the United States,” he said. “Right now, we barely have a relationship with Canada because of the tariffs.”

Energy & Environment

After President Donald Trump won reelection in November, Pallone, the top-ranking Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said he would try to rebuff Trump’s attacks on environmental policy.

Businesses cancelled or limited more than $22 billion worth of new construction and low-carbon energy projects in the first half of the year, according to a tally from E2, an environmental and business group, maintains.

The Republican-majority Congress voted in July as part of the Trump administration’s tax- and spending-cut bill to end a variety of Biden-era renewable energy tax credits.

Among many repercussions from that vote is a high-speed sprint from homeowners to install residential solar before the end of the year, when a key federal tax credit runs out.

By burning fossil fuels — oil, coal and gas — humans have warmed the planet to a dangerous point. Due to human-driven climate change, the last ten years were the warmest in ten warmest on record, according to NASA data.