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The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission held a public meeting on Wednesday afternoon at the YMCA of Dallas County to discuss the pipeline expansion project.

Nina McDaniel, engineer with FERC, said purpose of the meeting was to get input from the community about the pipeline expansion project that will install 21 miles of new pipeline parallel to the existing pipeline in Dallas County.

“We have representatives from FERC and from KinderMorgan to answer questions that residents have about the project,” McDaniel said. “Members can also submit comments in writing. We also have a court stenographer who will dictate oral comments as well. The comments from today will be entered into the public record.”

The project is being developed by Southern Natural Gas Company, a Delaware-based company equally owned by subsidiaries of Kinder Morgan, Southern Company and Elba Express, which is a subsidiary of Kinder Morgan.

The project is expected to cost $3 billion and will increase the capacity of the line by up to 1.3 billion cubic feet per day.

McDaniel said they are very early in the project. Right now, they are having a scoping period where they are getting input from the community to deal with any questions or issues that they see with the project.

“We are right now at the profiling period,” McDaniel said. “Nothing is set in stone. This is one of 25 different town hall meetings that we are having for this project.”

The scoping comment period ends on April 7, but McDaniel said comments are still welcome at every phase of the project. For those who did not make the meeting in Selma, they can still submit comments on the FERC website or via mail.