Controversies over natural gas pipeline siting and construction have turned the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) into a newsmaker in recent years. As public awareness concerning pipeline projects grows, more members of the public are turning to the FERC’s website (ferc.gov), to understand how FERC evaluates pipeline certificate applications and to get updates on the status of individual applications.

Concerned that FERC is not yet ready for this challenge, a May 2018 Department of Energy (DOE) audit of FERC’s gas pipeline certificate process concluded that FERC’s website needs revamping to provide greater transparency and more timely public access to all project-related information. Specifically, DOE faulted ferc.gov for not containing a step-by-step flow chart or a comprehensive narrative of the entire natural gas certificate process. But although FERC Chairman Kevin McIntyre immediately committed to implementing DOE’s recommendation, the pipeline process flow charts available on FERC’s website today remain those first posted several years ago.

An important element of ferc.gov is the eLibrary portal, the FERC’s official public document repository for all FERC submissions and issuances. eLibrary is now 20 years old and it is generally agreed that it is in need of reliability improvements (a too frequent complaint is that eLibrary is down, yet again). It also lacks search functionality – its user interface is overly complex and searches do not always provide accurate and/or complete results.