Underground Construction - January 2019 - 12

WASHINGTONWATCH
F2897-11a and revise the permanent
submitted petitions to the PHMSA,
which had not been acted on by the
marking standard on plastic pipe
Obama Administration.
and components to being legible at
the time of installation.
Senate Confirms 5th
In the end, PHMSA ignored
FERC Commissioner
the GPAC recommendations and
Despite Concerns
eliminated any track-and-trace
requirements. PHMSA expects to
The Senate approved Bernard
consider all the GPAC comments
McNamee as the fifth Comand the recommendations related
missioner at the Federal Energy
to tracking and traceability recordRegulatory Commission on Dec. 6,
keeping after further evaluating the
but he will take his seat with a big
costs and benefits. These issues may
question mark over his head. Even
be revisited in either a subsequent
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), the
final action or a new rulemaking
chairperson of the Senate Energy
project.
and Natural Resources Committee,
The final rule does grant the
who voted for McNamee on Nov.
distribution industry a long-sought
27, said, "Some of his comments
request by increasing to 0.40 the
were unfortunate." She was alluding
design factor for polyethylene (PE)
to a speech he gave in early 2018
pipe from the current standard of
in which he made a number of dis.32. The AGA had been pressing for
paraging remarks about renewable
this
change
for
a
decade,
and
had
fuelsPM
and Page
lauded1fossil fuels. FERC
GM6290AD.QXD_Layout 1 4/13/17 1:56

is an independent agency and is
supposed to make decisions on
renewables, natural gas and other
inputs independently.
McNamee was executive
director, Office of Policy at U.S.
Department of Energy (DOE). He
acknowledged saying, "Renewables,
when they come on and off, it
screws up the whole the physics of
the grid." He also disparaged "the
Green Movement."
Having been a top official at
the DOE, he is considered close to
Energy Secretary Rick Perry, who in
the fall of 2017 asked FERC to adopt
rules giving a ratemaking boost
to electric utilities who used coal.
Had FERC gone along with Perry's
request, the result might have
disadvantaged natural gas pipelines.
But FERC rejected that request in
January 2018 while opening a new

rulemaking into grid resilience.
There have been no developments
on that.
Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.),
the committee's top Democrat,
voted "no" on the McNamee nomination as did all Democrats except
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) who
changed his vote on Dec. 6 when
McNamee's name came to the
Senate Floor. Otherwise, the vote to
confirm the former DOE staffer was
50-49 along party lines.
Cantwell noted that the Energy
Committee refused to approve
President Obama's nomination of
Ronald Binz for a seat at FERC because of Binz's support for renewable energy. She said McNamee's
comments "more clearly" show bias
than Binz's. Referring to McNamee,
she added: "His speech shows he is
neither fair nor judicious."

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12

JANUARY 2019 | UConOnline.com

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Underground Construction - January 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Underground Construction - January 2019