The U.S. Energy Department confirmed last Friday that a controversial, 645-mile regional transmission line proposed to cross northern Oklahoma has been canceled.
The decision was announced by Oklahoma House Speaker-elect Kyle Hilbert and was confirmed by OK Energy Today in a statement from DOE spokeswoman Kristen Nawoj in the agency’s Grid Deployment Office.
“DOE can confirm that the proposed Delta-Plains National Interest Electric Transmission Corridor (NIETC) will not be moving forward in the designation process. A full list of the proposed corridors moving into Phase 3 of the four-phase designation process will be announced the week of December 16. The announcement will include updated maps and detailed geographic boundaries for proposed NIETCs moving forward in the designation process, will open a new public comment period, and will outline additional public engagement opportunities. The NIETC designation process will continue to maximize opportunities for public input throughout each of the phases to help DOE identify narrow geographic areas where transmission is urgently needed and where NIETC designation could help accelerate solutions.”
In the face of overwhelming opposition, the Biden administration’s Department of Energy decided to scrap plans for an 18-mile-wide electric transmission corridor proposed to span Oklahoma. Both Hilbert and Attorney General Gentner Drummond cited conversations with senior department officials informing them of the cancellation.
The attorney general issued a letter last week to U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, outlining his opposition to the plan.
“The proposed corridor will undoubtedly have a negative effect on property owners’ livelihoods,” the A.G. wrote. “The threat of Federal Eminent Domain to property owners is classic Federal overreach. Representing all Oklahomans, I will not sit idly by and allow it to proceed without exercising all lawful measures to protect the private property rights of our Oklahoma farmers and ranchers.”
The Delta-Plains National Interest Electric Transmission Corridor is one of several proposed corridors across the U.S. intended to expand the nation’s power grid. It would have stretched from the western panhandle through the Arkansas border, measuring up to 18 miles in width along the way.
The federal proposal aimed to incentivize companies to build transmission lines along the proposed Oklahoma corridor.
Hilbert filed a legislative resolution last Thursday, opposing the corridor. The resolution vowed “to take all legislative action available to prevent the establishment of an 18-mile wide federal energy corridor in Oklahoma.”
Hilbert and other lawmakers addressed hundreds of Oklahomans gathered at the Creek County Fairgrounds Thursday night to oppose the federal transmission corridor. “This afternoon I received a call from the United States Department of Energy,” Hilbert told the crowd. “The Delta Plains Corridor will not be a possible national corridor as of Monday.”
That corridor was part of the NIETC designation process. The federal program aims to identify areas in the U.S. that need more electrical transmission infrastructure over the next decade and eventually provide funding for companies that build transmission lines to fill that need.
One of ten proposed corridors, the Delta-Plains Corridor extended approximately 645 miles from the Oklahoma panhandle to Little Rock, Arkansas. More electric power needed by 2035 According to the Department of Energy, the region will need more than five times as much transmission capacity as it currently has by 2035.
Much of the opposition to the NIETC focused on potential use of eminent domain within the corridor.
'Everyone in Oklahoma should be concerned by this federal land grab attempt if the NIETC designation is granted,' Rep. Brad Boles (R-Marlow) said in a statement.
However, according to an FAQ page for the NIETC process, the designation did not mean “any immediate transmission construction, use of eminent domain to acquire land, or impacts to existing land uses without further process.”
Before the meeting at the Creek County Fairgrounds, Dylan Reed with the DOE’s Grid Deployment Office said public feedback had been the goal at this point of the NIETC timeline. He said the idea was not to take an 18-mile-wide swath of land, but to work with landowners within that area to identify space for an approximately 100-foot-wide transmission line.
“We intentionally made some of these proposed corridors wide because we don't know these areas as well as the people who live there,” Reed said. “People told us, ‘Hey, you can't do that here because of these local concerns.’ And that was very helpful to hear that.”
Hilbert said Reed called him to inform him the DOE was removing the corridor across Oklahoma from the preliminary list of NIETC options.
Nevertheless, multiple private companies are already in the process of building transmission lines through the would-be NIETC area. Among them:
• Invenergy’s Cimarron Link would be a High Voltage Direct Current transmission line delivering new renewable energy supply from the Oklahoma Panhandle to rapidly growing load centers in eastern Oklahoma. This power line would transmit 1,900 megawatts of energy capacity. The DOE announced in October that Cimarron Link was selected to enter award negotiations for a $306 million capacity contract.
• Transource’s Sooner-Wekiwa project proposes construction of a 76-mile overhead 345-kilovolt electric transmission line between Oklahoma Gas & Electric’s Sooner Substation in Noble County to Public Service Co. of Oklahoma’s Wekiwa Substation in Tulsa County, and upgrading both of those substations.
Consumers are frequently harmed from a lack of transmission infrastructure, which can directly contribute to higher electricity prices, more frequent power outages from extreme weather, and longer outages as the grid struggles to come back online. While these needs are urgent, building and expanding electric transmission often requires several years of permitting, siting, and regulatory processes, especially if the transmission line extends through multiple states and regions.