From right, Amanda Uri, 16, Elsa Hammer, 18, and Emma Murillo, 19, hold signs while protesting a proposed expansion of the GTN Pipeline on Friday in downtown Bend.  

Around 25 vocal climate activists gathered in downtown Bend on Friday to protest increased natural gas flow through a pipeline that snakes from Canada through the Pacific Northwest and skirts the eastern edge of the city.

Gas Transmission Northwest’s proposed Xpress Project would increase the amount of methane that flows through the pipeline to 150 million cubic feet per day. Local activists fear that expanding the pipeline, which is more than 1,300-miles long, could contribute an additional 3.47 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions every year.

“I have to live on this planet,” said Amanda Uri, 16. “I want there to be action and I want to have a say.”

The proposed $335 million project is currently awaiting approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the body that regulates interstate electricity, natural gas and oil transmission. The commission was scheduled to make a decision at its Feb. 16 meeting, but as of Friday, the meeting agenda did not include the expansion project.

Frederik Finney-Jordet, a 20-year-old Central Oregon Community College student and one of the protest’s organizers, firmly believes that the future of the environment will be affected by individual actions today.

“It’s true that of the generations here today, our generation will be the most affected by climate change,” said Finney-Jordet, who encouraged protestors through a bullhorn.

The activists hope the commission makes a decision on the pipeline on Feb. 16, but they plan to continue work regardless.

“If there’s work to be done, we’ll be back on the street,” Finney-Jordet said.

The Attorneys General from Oregon, California and Washington requested the commission deny the proposed expansion in August. They submitted another letter Friday requesting the same thing, arguing Gas Transmission Northwest failed to disclose the true nature of greenhouse gas emission impacts. Senators Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., have submitted a formal letter of opposition to the expansion.

“Expanding fossil gas through the GTN Xpress will undermine the efforts in Oregon to support a cleaner, safer, and effective alternative to fossil gas. Rather than helping Americans, GTN Xpress would be supporting a market for dirty fossil gas from a foreign country,” Merkley and Wyden wrote in a joint December letter.

Cascade Natural Gas, the Central Oregon-based natural gas provider that serves many cities and towns throughout the Pacific Northwest, including Bend, has agreed to buy some of the natural gas that will come through the expanded pipeline under a 31-year contract.

The expansion project hasn’t been vetted by the Oregon Public Utilities Commission, which regulates utility rates, said Rory Isbell, a local attorney and the Bend representative for the Citizens’ Utility Board of Oregon, a nonprofit organization that aims to hold for-profit utility companies accountable.

“It sure sounds like it’s a burden on ratepayers because it’s an expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure when locally here in Bend, in the state of Oregon and nationally there are efforts to reduce fossil fuel use and electrify household energy use,” Isbell said prior to the protest.

Local seniors from activist groups Vocal Seniority and Indivisible Sisters were part of the protest Friday on the corner of Wall Street and Newport Avenue.

“There’s so much evidence of climate change,” said Gail Sabbadini, an activist for 50 years. “It’s going the wrong way.”

When there’s profits to be made, projects like the pipeline expansion happen, she said.

Gas Transmission Northwest is a subsidiary of TC Energy. TC Energy also owns the Keystone Pipeline, which runs from Canada to Texas through the Midwestern United States. Two months ago, the pipeline sprung a leak in Washington County, Kansas, spilling 13,000 barrels of crude oil due to a crack in the pipeline, recent results of an investigation into the leak revealed.

TC Energy maintained that natural gas is critical to any strategy to meet North America’s long-term energy needs.

“GTNXP is designed to upgrade our system to meet increased demands from our customers in the region, providing the reliable energy to communities throughout the Western U.S. in a safe, responsible and reliable manner,” a spokesperson for TC Energy wrote in an unsigned email.

The activists reached out to 350Deschutes, a nonprofit environmental advocate, for sponsorship. The organization is part of a coalition of states that will all be affected by the pipeline, including Washington, California, and Oregon.

350Deschutes will hold a hybrid “People’s Hearing” on Monday evening with other state organizations so the public’s comments on the expansion project can be heard. They plan to send the recorded hearing to the Energy Commission.