What FERC's 2026 Permitting Overhaul Means for Your ROW Timeline

What FERC's 2026 Permitting Overhaul Means for Your ROW Timeline

On May 21, 2026, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission voted 5–0 to propose the most sweeping rewrite of its natural gas blanket certificate program since 2006. For an industry that has spent two decades planning projects around a known permitting cadence, that's not a small procedural update. It's a signal that the timeline between "approved" and "in the ground" is about to compress - and that compression lands somewhere specific: right-of-way acquisition.

What Actually Changed

The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, Docket No. RM25-12-001, would roughly double the cost thresholds that let pipeline companies build and modify infrastructure without a full, case-by-case Section 7 certificate review. It also expands the categories of projects eligible for streamlined authorization and, for the first time, extends the blanket certificate framework toward LNG facilities.

The timing tracks a broader pattern. In June 2025, FERC issued a two-year temporary waiver raising blanket certificate cost limits while this rulemaking was underway, and separately waived its Order No. 871 policy - which had blocked construction from starting while rehearing requests were pending. The May 2026 NOPR is the more permanent step in that sequence.

The cost-threshold increase isn't arbitrary. FERC cited an Interstate Natural Gas Association of America analysis showing the median cost to build a pipeline rose roughly 257% per inch-mile between 2006 and 2024, with compression costs up about 173% per horsepower - while the blanket program's dollar limits had risen only about 50% over the same span. The thresholds had simply fallen out of step with what it costs to build anything today.

Why This Matters Beyond the Permitting Desk

Separately, the House passed H.R. 3668 in December 2025, which would require FERC to issue or deny natural gas certificate authorizations within 90 days of completing its NEPA review. Paired with the blanket certificate changes, the direction is consistent: federal review is being compressed at almost every stage it touches.

That's good news for capital deployment. It's also a planning problem. When the regulatory phase of a project shrinks, the project's true critical path shifts to whichever phase is slowest to scale alongside it - and for most linear infrastructure projects, that's land.

The New Pressure Point: Right-of-Way

Right-of-way acquisition doesn't compress just because a docket moves faster. Title research, landowner contact, negotiation, and document execution are sequential, relationship-driven steps that take roughly the same amount of time per tract regardless of how fast the certificate was issued. If permitting timelines shrink while ROW teams are still working at the same per-tract pace they always have, the gap between "approved" and "construction-ready" doesn't close - it just moves earlier in the schedule, and it gets more visible.

It's worth noting the rulemaking is still in its comment period, and the final rule may differ from what's proposed. But the direction - toward faster federal review across this administration's energy policy agenda - is unlikely to reverse regardless of how this specific NOPR is finalized.

Building Land Programs That Can Keep Pace

For project teams, the practical takeaway is to stress-test the land acquisition plan against a faster permitting timeline now, before it becomes the reason a project slips. That means real-time visibility into tract-by-tract status, standardized reporting if more than one ROW contractor is working the corridor, and the ability to make tract-level decisions quickly rather than after a weekly status call.

This is precisely the kind of acceleration SkyRay was built around - giving land and ROW teams a real-time, single source of truth instead of a patchwork of contractor spreadsheets that update on their own schedule, not the project's.

Sources:

• Foley & Lardner LLP, "FERC Just Rewrote the Rules for Natural Gas Infrastructure. Here's What It Means." (May 22, 2026)
• Natural Gas Intelligence, "FERC Overhauls Natural Gas Pipeline Permitting as Demand Strains Capacity" (May 26, 2026)
• Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney PC, "U.S. House Passes Bill to Expedite Interstate Natural Gas Pipeline Permitting" (Dec. 22, 2025)
• FERC.gov, "FERC Revises NEPA Procedures to Make Permitting More Efficient"

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