The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission wants LNG terminal operators to stop filing case-specific applications for routine plant work. A proposed rule published Oct. 20 would set up a blanket authorization program for liquefied natural gas plants, modeled on the one interstate pipelines have used since 1982. It reaches past routine work, too: new liquefaction trains, storage tanks and marine berths could proceed after a 90-day notice period if no protest survives.
Comments are due Dec. 21 in Docket No. RM26-2-001. FERC estimates the change pulls about three projects a year out of the case-specific process. It says the number of projects that get built wouldn’t change, only the route to approval.
Three tiers for LNG blanket authorization
The proposal sorts plant work into three buckets.
Automatic. Replacements, upgrades and new components that don’t raise authorized capacity and stay inside the plant’s footprint and design limits. The list is long: piping and valves, process vessels, rotating and fired equipment, safety instrumented systems, buildings and electrical gear, plus auxiliary systems from flare and relief lines to firewater and hazard detection. Holders would notify affected landowners and the local municipality 45 days before construction, unless the job involves no ground disturbance, no change in operating air or noise emissions and no added hazard.
60-day prior notice. Work inside the footprint and design limits that does increase authorized capacity. That includes uprates. FERC refused to make them automatic even when efficiency gains show up during construction, because more throughput can mean more ship calls and fresh reviews by the Coast Guard and PHMSA.
90-day prior notice. New LNG facilities and auxiliary systems outside the authorized footprint. The conditions are tight. An expansion has to sit inside the existing site or next to it, permanently occupy no more than 25 acres of previously disturbed land in an industrial or unzoned area, and match a facility type FERC already approved at that plant.
If a protest isn’t withdrawn or dismissed, the request converts into a regular Section 3 or Section 7 application. FERC would dismiss protests that don’t raise a substantive issue, the same test it applies to pipelines.
What the LNG industry asked for, and what it got
The Center for Liquefied Natural Gas, joined by the American Petroleum Institute and INGAA, pitched the three-tier structure in comments on FERC’s November 2025 notice of inquiry. Cheniere Energy, owner of the Sabine Pass and Corpus Christi terminals, backed it. CLNG wanted 60 days of notice for new trains. FERC added 30 days to each prior-notice tier, saying staff, landowners and the public need the time.
The industry did win on cost. Pipeline blanket projects carry dollar caps. LNG blanket projects wouldn’t, because FERC says cost is a poor proxy for whether LNG work deserves a closer look.
Not everyone signed on. Earthjustice and attorneys general from nine states, including Maryland, New York and Massachusetts, opposed letting expansions ride on a blanket authorization at all.
One cleanup item matters to maintenance contractors. Two years after a final rule, FERC’s existing Section 2.55 provision would stop covering auxiliary installations and replacements at LNG plants held under a blanket authorization, so that work moves into the new tiers.
Why LNG contractors should read the fine print
Firms that build and maintain Gulf Coast terminals, such as Bechtel at Cheniere’s Sabine Pass and Corpus Christi plants, mostly feel FERC as schedule risk: a variance request or an order that holds up a tie-in during a turnaround. Moving in-kind replacements to an automatic tier takes much of that off the critical path.
The 90-day tier is the bigger change for capital work, but its same-type and 25-acre limits make it a brownfield tool. It fits a follow-on train beside existing ones, the kind of scope behind Fluor’s LNG Canada Phase 2 booking north of the border. It won’t help a greenfield terminal. For an owner planning a seventh or eighth train on land it already holds, 90 days of notice beats an open-ended order process, as long as nobody files a protest FERC can’t dismiss.