FERC Streamlines Natural Gas Permitting in Support of Infrastructure

On June 18, 2026, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC” or the “Commission”) announced two orders at its June 2026 Open Meeting that will streamline approvals of natural gas infrastructure projects by adhering more closely to statutory requirements and relatively recent Supreme Court precedent.

• In an order approving Eastern Gas Transmission and Storage, Inc.’s Appalachian Reliability Project (the “Eastern Gas Order”), the Commission clarified that the National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”) does not mandate a cumulative effects analysis that extends beyond the reasonably foreseeable effects of the project directly before the agency. This order follows the Supreme Court’s decision in Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, Colorado (“Seven County”) in May 2025 that expressed an agency’s ability to establish reasonable limits on the scope of its NEPA review. However, cumulative effects are not out of the picture entirely, as the Commission noted that an analysis of “other activities in the vicinity” can help the agency satisfy its obligation to contextualize its review of the project at hand.
• The Commission’s order authorizing construction of Cheniere Creole Trail Pipeline’s Gillis Header Project (the “Creole Trail Order”) also clarified that only filings that adhere to regulatory requirements for protests in prior notice proceedings will be considered protests, departing from FERC’s history of construing a wide range of comments and filings as protests, thus limiting procedural obstructions to prior notice requests and projects.

Together, these orders advance the Commission’s goal of making environmental reviews more efficient to build infrastructure that, in the words of Chairman Laura Swett, is “desperately need[ed].”

The Shrinking Scope of Cumulative Effects

Key takeaways:

• Permitting Efficiency. FERC is “working hard at reforms that will streamline gas permitting” and reduce procedural burdens. The Eastern Gas Order clarifies that FERC will no longer analyze cumulative effects in standalone sections of its NEPA reviews, with more focus placed on the project under review.
• Context-based approach remains. FERC will continue to consider project-related impacts cumulatively with impacts from activities “in the vicinity” of proposed projects. Thus, FERC can ensure a properly contextualized review, even if it does not include all conceivable projects across larger areas.
• Guidance for applicants. While reforms can expedite initial project approvals, project opponents will undoubtedly continue to scrutinize agency practices and look for creative or novel litigation strategies to challenge and derail projects. Applicants should continue to evaluate the impacts of other activities occurring in the vicinity, i.e., near the “time and place” of the project, to ensure a robust record that addresses impacts from the project combined with those from activities occurring in the vicinity of the project. This will help ensure that resulting Commission orders are defensible in litigation.

NEPA requires FERC to consider the “reasonably foreseeable environmental effects” of its actions, such as authorizing natural gas infrastructure projects under the Natural Gas Act (“NGA”). The extent to which agencies need to consider the impacts of other activities—including the potential “upstream and downstream” activities and effects “that are separate in time or place from” the project before the agency in their NEPA review has long been a point of contention, in some cases turning NEPA’s procedural requirements into a “blunt and haphazard tool” used to delay or stop infrastructure development.¹ Under the now-rescinded Council on Environmental Quality (“CEQ”) regulations, agencies often separately evaluated a project’s cumulative effects—the incremental effects of an action when considering other past, present, and reasonably foreseeable future actions. In some instances, this led agencies to consider potential effects that were far afield of those related to the project before them. In Seven County, the Supreme Court clarified that agencies need not consider impacts from projects that are “separate in time or place,” are outside the instant agency’s regulatory authority, or that would be initiated “if at all, by third parties.”²

In announcing the Eastern Gas Order, FERC Chairman Swett explained that the Commission’s NEPA reviews to date “ha[ve] not fully capitalized on recent legislation, the Supreme Court’s decision in Seven County, and CEQ’s rescission of NEPA regulations.”³ Noting that NEPA itself does not explicitly reference cumulative effects, the Eastern Gas Order clarified that FERC need not continue to identify a “distinct and separate category” of cumulative impacts, since it exceeds what NEPA requires and contributes to “undue procedural burdens” on applicants and agency staff.

The Eastern Gas Order acts to bring FERC’s NEPA procedures more in line with how many other federal agencies updated their NEPA procedures (which we discuss here), especially in how FERC did not entirely jettison the concept behind the traditional cumulative effects analysis. Although many other agencies do not require specific discussion of cumulative effects, they maintain procedures ensuring that the agency’s environmental analysis considers the context in which the project’s effects occur. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, Department of Energy, and Department of the Interior, for example, explain that environmental effects are evaluated “in the context of the potentially affected environment” while considering “trends and planned actions in the area.”

The Eastern Gas Order takes a similar approach. Importantly, in a nod to Seven County, it emphasizes that FERC will consider impacts from activities “in the vicinity of a proposed project” as necessary to help the Commission fulfill its NEPA obligations, as this ensures a “holistic and properly contextualized” review of the reasonably foreseeable impacts of the proposed action. The context-based approach espoused in the Eastern Gas Order allows the Commission to continue considering certain impacts that were previously within the “cumulative impacts” category, albeit on a scale more closely tied to the project at hand. The Commission has experience in addressing these types of cumulative impacts using other terminology, such as when FERC’s NEPA documents prepared under a prior version of the CEQ regulations included a discussion of “Environmental Trends and Planned Activities” rather than a dedicated cumulative effects section, despite the continuing reference to cumulative effects in the Commission’s own regulations. FERC Staff may seek to undertake a similar, more context-driven approach to cumulative impacts. 

Cumulative impacts are unlikely to completely disappear from FERC NEPA reviews. Under the Eastern Gas Order, FERC Staff will continue to consider the impacts of activities “in the vicinity” of a proposed action—such as a power plant located next to a proposed pipeline that will be under construction at the same time as the proposed pipeline or other activities occurring adjacent to a new compressor station that could result in additive impacts—but will no longer dedicate separate sections in NEPA documents to identifying all past, present, and foreseeable projects across large swathes of land that frequently offer little useful information and that do not help contextualize the actual impacts of the project being evaluated. To ensure more robust and defensible Commission orders, applicants should continue to evaluate the impacts of other activities occurring in the vicinity of the project. Applicants should evaluate and consider those impacts within the context of the discussion of the project’s effects, which will help ensure that resulting Commission orders can stand up to judicial review.

It remains to be seen how or when the Eastern Gas Order may be reflected in the Commission’s regulations and guidance documents governing environmental reports for NGA applications. However, as Chairman Swett previewed, there is “more to come,” and it remains possible that FERC may ultimately go through the formal process to update its NEPA regulations to remove references to “cumulative effects.”

Reforms to Blanket Certificate Proceedings

Key takeaway:

• Strict adherence to regulations. The Creole Trail Order clarifies that filings in blanket certificate proceedings that do not clearly meet the regulatory requirements for protests will no longer be considered as such, ensuring nonspecific opposition or mere comments will not derail projects that otherwise qualify for blanket authorization.

The Commission announced that it would strictly apply its regulation governing what constitutes a protest under its blanket certificate program. FERC’s blanket certificate program allows natural gas companies to file a “prior notice” of blanket activity to obtain authorization under Section 7 of the NGA for certain limited-scope activities within Commission-set cost limits without seeking a separate, case-specific certificate order. Projects are automatically authorized so long as no protests are filed within 60 days of notice of the project; or if a protest is timely filed, such protest must be dismissed by the Director of the Office of Energy Projects within 10 days of filing or withdrawn within 30 days of the end of the notice period for the project to be automatically authorized. Though the Commission’s regulations set out strict requirements defining what qualifies as a “protest,” the Commission has historically accepted more general comments as protests—even if nothing in the filing indicates the comment was intended as such.

The Commission’s Creole Trail Order clarifies that filings in blanket proceedings that do not meet clearly defined regulatory requirements “will not be considered protests by the Commission and will not necessitate a Commission order.” By adhering to its nearly 50-year-old regulatory text, FERC’s order ensures that nonspecific opposition or mere comments on a prior notice filing will not obstruct a project that otherwise meets the requirements to proceed under blanket authorization.

This order is the latest in the Commission’s actions regarding its blanket certificate procedures with an eye towards streamlining infrastructure proceedings. In May 2026, the Commission announced a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to revise its blanket certificate program to, among other reforms, increase the cost limits for projects that may be constructed under a blanket authorization and expand the blanket certificate program to encompass expansions of existing compressor stations that increase capacity, regardless of cost, when those projects are located within existing facilities’ footprints. If ultimately adopted, these revisions would allow a greater scope of critical infrastructure projects to take advantage of these more efficient permitting procedures.

We will continue to monitor FERC’s initiatives to streamline infrastructure development. Please reach out to your Vinson & Elkins team to discuss these matters and their implications for your business.

¹Seven County Infrastructure Coal. v. Eagle Cnty., Colo.,605 U.S. 168, 183 (2025).

²Id. at 186–87.

³Opening Remarks of Chairman Laura Swett, FERC Commission June Open Meeting, at 13:38–13:49 (June 18, 2026), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7y-iDn-rkU&t=420s.

This information is provided by Vinson & Elkins LLP for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended, nor should it be construed, as legal advice.