Orrick’s Appellate Team Produces Another Major Win for the LNG and Natural Gas Industries

• The Orrick team persuaded the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Court to uphold the approval of Woodside Energy’s plan to construct parallel, roughly 30-mile gas pipelines in Louisiana.
• In 2023, Orrick defeated the Sierra Club’s challenges to the Army Corp’s permit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit that allowed the building of the Louisiana LNG production and terminal facility in southwestern Louisiana, and the main pipeline serving that facility. Sierra Club then brought a challenge in the D.C. Circuit to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) authorization of two additional natural gas pipelines – known as Lines 200 and 300 – that would provide service to the Louisiana LNG facility and the local Lake Charles region.
• Now, in a unanimous opinion (by Judge Bradley Garcia), the Court rejects every one of the Sierra Club’s arguments and held FERC properly authorized the construction of the pipelines.
• The Court’s ruling fully denied Sierra Club’s challenge. This decision means that Woodside Energy can construct and develop these vitally needed pipelines.

Orrick’s team on this matter included Bob Loeb, Lisa Tonery, Josh Rosenkranz and Geoff Shaw. This big win follows on the heels of last week’s major Orrick win for NextDecade, allowing it to continue building its Rio Grande project (an $18.4-billion LNG facility set to supply an amount equal to 6% of the world’s LNG needs).