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WASHINGTON – Following their conversation in January, U.S. Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND) questioned Brenda Mallory, President Joe Biden’s choice for Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), during her Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee nomination hearing today about whether she supports pipelines and how her current work at a legal environmental group which regularly takes on litigation against pipelines would impact her work as Chair of CEQ.
“CEQ plays a really important role in infrastructure review and approvals. Your current employer, the Southern Environmental Law Center, has been a high-profile litigant against numerous pipelines within the states you will now have oversight of, and when you joined SELC, you said it was a ‘perfect fit,’” said Senator Cramer. “When the Atlantic Coast Pipeline was canceled, one of your colleagues was quoted as saying, ‘this risky and unnecessary project is on the scrap heap where it belongs, and the decks are cleared.’ Do you agree with your colleague’s sentiment, and is there at least one well-known pipeline project that you have ever supported?”
Mrs. Mallory refused to provide a concrete answer, only saying she had previously worked on pipelines in the private sector and will be focused on carrying out President Biden’s agenda. Senator Cramer then delivered remarks on the Dakota Access Pipeline.
“The Dakota Access Pipeline — which as you imagine is very important to North Dakota, begins in North Dakota, and moves about 600,000 barrels of Bakken crude to market every day, has been operating successfully for four years without any incidents – was recently ordered to redo its National Environmental Policy Act compliance after it was built and safely operating,” said Senator Cramer. “The company did do an Environmental Assessment [as ordered by the Obama Administration] instead of an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and now through external litigation they are forced to kick through shifting goalposts and of course, it’s litigation from organizations like yours.”
“Can you commit the White House will not interfere with the timely progression of the results of the EIS?” asked Senator Cramer. “There is a lot of political pressure being applied to the White House and the president himself to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline after these four years of successful operation. Can you commit that the White House won’t interfere politically?”
Mrs. Mallory again deflected, saying Biden Administration decisions would be made based on science. Senator Cramer responded by reminding her the pipeline has followed the scientific process laid out by both the Obama and Trump administrations.
“I appreciate your commitment to science,” responded Senator Cramer. “The Environmental Assessment was done. It was done under the Obama Administration and approved by the U.S. Corps of Army Engineers, and the EIS is being done, all for good scientific reasons. So I would hope that at the end of all that … we can keep the Dakota Access Pipeline operating, lest we become dependent on other nations again.”
