Romney calls for less red tape in energy infrastructure permitting

One of the biggest barriers to building energy infrastructure in the United States is the red tape and bureaucracy that allows the permitting process for new energy projects to drag on for years, say U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) and seven of his Senate colleagues.

The lawmakers denounced draft guidance proposed on Oct. 24 by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) that they say would put more onerous permitting requirements on the sponsors of energy infrastructure projects. 

“We urge you to withdraw this proposed guidance and to take no additional action to make it final,” wrote the senators in a Dec. 12 letter sent to U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland. 

The BOEM’s proposed guidance sets burdensome requirements on energy infrastructure projects before allowing them to take advantage of permitting benefits, such as a structured process for enhanced coordination with agencies that are available to them under the law, wrote Sen. Romney and his colleagues, who included U.S. Sens. Rob Portman (R-OH), Steve Daines (R-MT), and Joe Manchin (D-WV).

“As such, this proposed guidance is flatly inconsistent with the law,” the senators wrote. “It also imposes additional cost and delay on energy projects that our country simply cannot afford.”

They reiterated support for FAST-41 permitting improvements included in Title 41 of the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act, legislation they sponsored that became law in December 2021 as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022.

The permitting improvements in the FAST-41 legislation made several significant benefits available for the nation’s most important infrastructure projects — defined as “covered projects” in the statute, according to the lawmakers’ letter. 

For example, under FAST-41, covered projects are posted to a “permitting dashboard” and the agencies involved are required to coordinate with the project sponsor and each other to develop and maintain a coordinated project plan and publicly posted permitting timetable. If the agencies miss deadlines, they are required to explain why, the lawmakers wrote.

The BOEM’s recent draft guidance, however, “flouts the law and undermines the very benefits that FAST-41 offers,” they wrote, noting that it “purports to require the completion of a ‘checklist’ where all responsibility for coordinating with regulatory agencies falls solely on project sponsors before the bureau will consider a project a FAST-41 covered project.”

With families experiencing record energy costs, the U.S. government should encourage and facilitate new energy infrastructure, Sen. Romney and his colleagues wrote. 

“The draft guidance promulgated by the [BOEM] seems to take the opposite approach,” they wrote. “It limits access to existing permitting transparency and efficiency measures while imposing even more red tape, cost, and delay on energy permitting. This is deeply concerning. We urge you to withdraw this proposed guidance.”