A provision in the debt ceiling bill heading to the U.S. House of Representatives includes language that would expedite the final permits for construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline.
A provision in the debt ceiling bill heading to the U.S. House of Representatives, called the Fiscal Responsibility Act, includes language that would expedite the final permits for construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline.
Once it is completed, the pipeline will move natural gas from the Marcellus and Utica shale deposits in West Virginia to North Carolina. The 304-mile pipeline is being held up by a 3.5-mile segment where it crosses the Jefferson National Forest.
Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., along with Rep. Carol Miller, R-W.Va., have supported the pipeline and worked to get the permits approved.
According to Manchin, the pipeline will put about 2,000 people to work building the pipeline, although it is unclear if those are jobs at one time or cumulative over the entire course of construction that was done in phases.
“I’ve been told it’s about $40 million a year in tax revenues to the state of West Virginia,” Manchin said. “And about $300 million a year in revenue to the royalty owners.”
Environmental groups have opposed the pipeline, and it has faced court challenges since 2015. Manchin said the provision in the debt ceiling bill will put an end to all of that, requiring judges to dismiss any pending litigation and forcing any new lawsuits to the U.S. Court of Appeals in the D.C. Circuit.
Earlier this year, West Virginia Coal Association President Chris Hamilton said he opposed the pipeline out of concern that it would displace coal-fired electricity generation at four power plants in North Carolina.
“I don’t know why coal and gas are going after each other when everybody else is going after both of them,” he said. “They should join forces that show, between coal and gas, 60 percent of the energy product provided in this country comes from those two sources.”
The latest push, by Sen. Joe Manchin, to have the provision attached to a defense spending bill, also came up short.
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito says she hasn’t given up on trying to get expedited permitting for the Mountain Valley Pipeline.
Speaking with West Virginia reporters Thursday, Capito says the effort to get some sort of permitting overhaul through the Senate has stalled.
The latest push, by Sen. Joe Manchin, to have the provision attached to a defense spending bill, also came up short.
“We’ve tried. Sen. Manchin and I have tried,” she said. “He’s tried on his own. I’ve tried on my own to put this into all kinds of different bills, with no success.”
Both senators want to give a green light to the 300-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline, which would transport natural gas from West Virginia to Virginia.
Environmental groups have been successful at blocking the pipeline’s completion in the courts.
Federal regulators recently gave the pipeline’s builders another four years to finish it.
To get Joe Manchin's vote on a budget bill, Democratic leaders promised to consider legislation that would help a natural gas pipeline get built in his state. But the pipeline still faces opposition.
Updated September 7, 2022 at 5:23 PM ET
GREENVILLE, W.Va. — The Mountain Valley Pipeline exists as a 303-mile-long chain with hundreds of missing links. Without all of its federal permits, the natural gas project cannot cross Jefferson National Forest or many of the streams and wetlands in its proposed path from West Virginia to North Carolina.
That includes one segment at the bottom of Maury Johnson’s family farmland in mountainous Monroe County, W.Va.
“It’s built from there over to the next hollow, and they can’t cross that stream,” Johnson says, pointing about halfway down the ridge, near a small patch where he grows corn, pumpkins and zinnias.
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Carlos Bernate for NPR
Maury Johnson, co-chair of the Protect Our Water, Heritage, Rights Coalition, looks over his property in Greenville, W.Va., on Thursday, Sept. 1, 2022.
That could change soon. When Congress passed historical climate spending last month, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) announced that his support had hinged on future legislation that would change the process for issuing permits for large energy infrastructure projects such as this one. A one-page summary released by Manchin’s office explicitly named steps to support the completion and operation of the Mountain Valley Pipeline. With Congress back in session, debate over this deal and what it means for the future of fossil fuels in the United States is resuming.
In West Virginia, supporters of the pipeline, including Manchin, say finishing it will bring in $40 million annually in tax revenue to the state and provide greater energy security for the United States.
“There’s not another project in America today that will bring this much energy within four to five months,” Manchin told West Virginia’s MetroNews radio network in August. “This has everything to do not only with West Virginia, but our country and the security and energy that we need.”
But local environmental groups say this deal subverts community input processes, and new fossil fuel infrastructure is incompatible with U.S. climate goals.
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Carlos Bernate for NPR
Pipes that have been sitting for years at Peter’s Mountain, Greenville, W.Va., on Thursday, Sept. 1, 2022.
“This is not just about Mountain Valley Pipeline, it’s about every community that has been sacrificed across this country” to further fossil fuel extraction, says Johnson, an activist who says pipeline construction put sediment in his well water and degraded his farmland.
Lawsuits over environmental impact stalled the pipeline
A series of lawsuits has slowed the Mountain Valley Pipeline’s progress.
Originally approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in 2017, the project was supposed to wrap up in 2018 with a budget of $3.5 billion. Environmental groups such as the Sierra Club and Appalachian Mountain Advocates sued federal agencies that issue the pipeline’s permits, arguing they failed to adhere to environmental law, and succeeded in getting several permits thrown out, some more than once. The cost of the project ballooned to more than $6 billion.
The area is too steep, too full of rivers and streams and home to endangered speciessuch as the candy darter, a small colorful fish, for the pipeline to be completed, says Joe Lovett, founder and executive director of Appalachian Mountain Advocates.
“It’s just an inappropriate project. Some things just can’t be built,” he says.
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Carlos Bernate for NPR
View from the top of Peter’s Mountain shows the effects of the pipeline, Greenville, W.Va., on Thursday, Sept. 1, 2022.
Legislation to speed up permitting for energy projects could change how future lawsuits are handled.
Lawsuits against the pipeline have been heard in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, based in Richmond, Va. The summary from Manchin’s office called for requiring “the relevant agencies to take all necessary actions to permit the construction and operation of the Mountain Valley Pipeline and give the D.C. Circuit jurisdiction over any further litigation.”
Manchin, whose office did not respond to requests for comment for this story, is the top recipient of donations from pipeline companies, according to Open Secrets.
Local activists balked at these proposals.
“If you have a criminal on the street that breaks the law, do you hold the criminal accountable or do you change the law so that they’re allowed to walk free?” says Autumn Crowe, program director with the non-profit West Virginia Rivers Coalition. That group has documented environmental concerns, including erosion and stream sedimentation, with federal regulators.
/ Carlos Bernate For NPR
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Carlos Bernate For NPR
Autumn Crowe, program director of the West Virginia Rivers Coalition, poses in Lewisburg, W.Va., on Thursday, Sept. 1, 2022.
Equitrans Midstream Corporation, the company managing the pipeline’s development and the largest owner of the project, did not respond to requests for interviews or comment for this story.
But pipeline advocates say lawsuits have led to unnecessary delays.
“There are certainly constituencies that believe that Mountain Valley has not had a fair hearing before a very narrow panel of judges,” says Christine Tezak, managing director with Clearview Energy Partners, a research firm that advises investors in major energy projects such as pipelines.
Some want natural gas in the renewable energy future
For some in the area, the pipeline symbolizes a larger battle happening over the future of fossil fuels in the United States, amid the transition to renewable energy.
“People don’t understand how many jobs are affected by gas, coal and oil,” says Bill Ray Wiseman, who works in equipment sales related to coal mining.
The pipeline cuts a path through some of his land in Summers County, W.Va., and he says the pasture that created improved his land.
Wiseman says he knows the gas, which is slated for markets in the eastern and southeastern United States, will not lower his gas bills, but he still thinks it should be completed, and fossil fuels should stay in the picture.
For utility companies and industrial energy users on the other end of the pipeline, natural gas is a part of their clean energy plans, since it would reduce their use of coal, Tezak says.
“They look at the availability of natural gas as a way to do their job in a better and lower emissions fashion,” she says.
But as climate scientists warn that the world must rapidly wean itself off fossil fuels, many others want it stopped.
“For the environmental community … every incremental pipeline is one pipeline too many,” says Tezak.
/ Carlos Bernate for NPR
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Carlos Bernate for NPR
Pipes that have been sitting for four years on the property of impacted landowner Maury Johnson, in Greenville, W.Va., on Thursday, Sept. 1, 2022.
Maury Johnson, of Greenville, is in that group. He’s heading to Washington, D.C. on Sept. 8 to join a protest against the pipeline and permitting reform, held by a group called People vs. Fossil Fuel.
Johnson says communities near fossil fuel infrastructure like Mountain Valley didn’t get a say in the pipeline deal, and now they want to be heard.
“We’re going to try to convince [Manchin] that this side deal is terrible,” he says.
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Putting liquefied natural gas, or LNG, on trains could be a way to get more of the fuel to export terminals, where it can be sent to Europe.
U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito says she supports allowing the movement of liquefied natural gas by rail.
Putting liquefied natural gas, or LNG, on trains could be a way to get more of the fuel to export terminals, where it can be sent to Europe.
On Thursday, the Biden administration struck a deal to export more LNG to the European Union. That will help European countries rely less on Russia for their energy needs as Vladimir Putin wages war on Ukraine.
A group of state attorneys general, including West Virginia’s Patrick Morrisey, asked the Biden administration last month to lift the moratorium.
“I think in the short term, being able to transport LNG on rail is safe and it should be allowed,” Capito said. “Because we’ve got to get it to the port to help our allies.”
Capito also says she supports easing regulatory hurdles to completing natural gas pipelines, including the Mountain Valley Pipeline.
U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin has called for the immediate completion of a stalled natural gas pipeline as an alternative to Russian energy.
Manchin said the Mountain Valley Pipeline, which stretches 300 miles across West Virginia and Virginia, can help European countries rely less on Russia for natural gas.
The pipeline is mostly complete but tied up in federal court. Environmental groups have successfully brought the project to a halt over concerns about impacts on waterways and endangered species.
But Manchin, who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said the pipeline should be completed now.
“That one pipeline coming out of West Virginia will put 2 billion cubic feet of gas a day into the market,” he said. “That can be accomplished in eight months. They’re 95 percent completed.”
Manchin is leading a bipartisan group of lawmakers in an effort to ban Russian imports of oil, natural gas and coal.
The decision is the latest setback for the 300-mile pipeline, intended to carry two billion cubic feet a day of natural gas from northern West Virginia.
In recent weeks, the same court rejected a permit for the pipeline to cross through the Jefferson National Forest on the Virginia-West Virginia border.
The Sierra Club and other organizations had sued to block the permit and challenged the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s findings on the endangered fish.
