As it turns out, there may be some conflicts of interest for some of the people that have been working for FERC on the Atlantic Coast Pipeline.

The FERC contracts out some of the work it does reviewing the pipeline application.  Merjent was hired by the FERC to review the ACP’s Environmental Impact Statement.

The EIS was put together by a company called Natural Resources Group.

There are eight Merjent employees who previously worked for Natural Resources Group.

All eight of those Merjent employees approved the work Natural Resources Group did on the ACP.

Looks like a pretty clear conflict of interest there.

That conflict of interest was supposed to have been disclosed when Merjent got the contract from the FERC.  It wasn’t.

Interestingly, Natural Resources Group is listed on Merjent’s web site as one of Merjent’s clients.

That looks pretty bad.