Otsego 2000, Inc. v. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals denied petitions for rehearing and rehearing en banc of its judgment that it lacked jurisdiction to hear a challenge to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s review of natural gas compression facilities in New York because the organizational petitioner failed to demonstrate Article III standing.

In an unpublished judgment, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed a challenge to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC’s) authorization of compression facilities for an existing natural gas pipeline network. The court did not reach the merits of the challenge—which included assertions that FERC failed to consider upstream and downstream greenhouse gas emissions—because the organizational petitioner failed to demonstrate Article III standing and the individual plaintiffs had not timely submitted a rehearing request to FERC. The D.C. Circuit noted that the organizational petitioner had acknowledged that it was not a membership organization and had not argued that it had associational standing. The D.C. Circuit found that the petitioner also did not have organizational standing since its affidavits had not identified any injury other that expenditure of time and money related to the litigation. The D.C. Circuit said the “information[al] injury” that the organization mentioned at oral argument was not properly before the court.