Lawmakers passed a bill April 11 related to oil pipeline routing in Nebraska.<\/p>\n
LB1161, sponsored by Papillion Sen. Jim Smith, would make changes to law enacted during a November 2011 special session called by Gov. Dave Heineman to regulate oil pipeline routing in Nebraska.<\/p>\n
Under LB1161, a pipeline carrier wishing to construct a major oil pipeline in Nebraska after the effective date of the bill must apply for approval from the governor under the provisions of LB4 passed during the special session.<\/p>\n
The governor may approve the application or refer it to the Public Service Commission (PSC) for further review under the Major Oil Pipeline Siting Act.<\/p>\n
Among other provisions, the bill also requires:
\n\u2022 that a carrier\u2019s eminent domain rights be terminated if they remain unused two years after approval of a pipeline application;
\n\u2022 the PSC to make public any documents or records relating to a major oil pipeline unless federal law provides otherwise;
\n\u2022 the state Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to hold at least one public hearing on an application under review by the department; and
\n\u2022 a carrier to reimburse DEQ for the cost of an evaluation within 60 days after notification of the cost.<\/p>\n
It is estimated that, under the bill\u2019s provisions, DEQ will be reimbursed $2 million in fiscal year 2012-13 for work done on a supplemental environmental impact study for TransCanada\u2019s proposed Keystone XL pipeline.<\/p>\n
The bill passed on a 44-5 vote and takes effect immediately.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lawmakers passed a bill April 11 related to oil pipeline routing in Nebraska. LB1161, sponsored by Papillion Sen. Jim Smith,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[15],"tags":[80],"class_list":["post-7554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-natural-resources","tag-sen-jim-smith"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7554"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7554\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9718,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7554\/revisions\/9718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}