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Mountain Valley Pipeline Builder Declares Construction Complete

In a letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Monday, Equitrans Midstream declared the project “mechanically complete” and in compliance with environmental and safety requirements.

The builder of the Mountain Valley Pipeline has asked federal regulators to give authorization for the natural gas pipeline to begin service on Tuesday.

In a letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Monday, Equitrans Midstream declared the project “mechanically complete” and in compliance with environmental and safety requirements.

The nearly $8 billion, 303-mile pipeline has been under construction since 2018.

Equitrans also told FERC it had completed water pressure testing on “all project facilities.”

A section of the pipeline burst during a pressure test on May 1 at Bent Mountain, Virginia.

It remains unclear whether FERC took the test failure into account. A pipeline safety watchdog asked FERC to give the project more scrutiny because of it.

The company has maintained that the incident warrants no safety concerns and demonstrates how the testing reveals problems that need to be corrected.

Residents, community groups, state lawmakers and county commissioners have asked FERC to deny the pipeline’s application for service.

Equitrans told FERC it had satisfied all aspects of a safety agreement it reached in October with the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.

The company cited the demand for the product in requesting quick regulatory approval.

“Multiple shippers have executed agreements to commence transporting volumes using the project facilities beginning the day after the project declares in-service, which further heightens the need for prompt authorization to meet market demands,” its letter said.

Construction of the pipeline was slowed by court challenges until a congressional spending deal last summer removed the regulatory and legal barriers to its completion.

Jessica Sims, Virginia field coordinator for Appalachian Voices, one of the groups that opposes the pipeline, said the people who live near it have unanswered questions about the pipeline’s readiness to begin operating.

“The community is in the dark about important safety and environmental considerations from the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration and FERC, while Mountain Valley Pipeline pressures FERC to prioritize the company’s sales schedule,” she said in an email.

When And How MVP Test Failure Was Reported To FERC Is Unclear

A Freedom of Information Act request to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission revealed no correspondence between the pipeline builder and FERC in the 10 days after the May 1 incident.

The builder of the Mountain Valley Pipeline has said it notified federal regulators when a section of the pipe ruptured last month during a pressure test.

However, a Freedom of Information Act request by West Virginia Public Broadcasting to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission revealed no correspondence between the pipeline builder, Equitrans Midstream, and the FERC Office of Energy Projects in the 10 days after the May 1 incident.

The Office of Energy Projects is tasked with approval of the pipeline to begin moving as much as 2 billion cubic feet of natural gas a day from north central West Virginia to southern Virginia. Among its other responsibilities: “safeguarding the public.”

The Pipeline Safety Trust, an independent watchdog group, encouraged FERC last month to closely examine the failed water pressure test at Bent Mountain, Virginia.

It remains unclear when and how FERC was notified of the ruptured pipe.

“We are aware of the situation,” wrote Celeste Miller, a FERC spokeswoman, in an email.

Natalie Cox, a spokeswoman for the pipeline’s builder, pointed to two documents in the FERC public docket: a construction status report posted on May 13 and an environmental compliance report posted on May 17.

Neither document conveys a sense of urgency about the incident.

The construction status report says on page 12 that an “inadvertent hydrotest discharge caused turbid water to enter several resources.”

On page 5 of the environmental compliance report, the entry says “the Compliance Monitor was notified that an applicant problem area report was written for sediment deposits beyond the limits of disturbance and into a sensitive resource at MP 246.1 due to a release of hydrostatic test water.”

Neither says the pipeline burst.

The incident was first made public because a landowner in Bent Mountain reported sediment-laden water on her property to the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, which sent an investigator and entered a report into an online incident database.

Another landowner in Bent Mountain tracked down and photographed the damaged section of pipe, which was transported away from the site on a flatbed truck.

In a letter to FERC dated May 10, Todd Normane, Equitrans Midstream senior vice president, and legal counsel for the Mountain Valley Pipeline, wrote that the pressure test failure warranted no safety concerns and demonstrated that the testing was working as intended.

“To reiterate, hydrostatic testing is a proof test to ensure all pipeline components will safely operate at the (maximum allowable operating pressure) prior to introducing gas into the pipeline,” he wrote.

The 303-mile pipeline has been under construction since 2018, and legal challenges brought work to a halt on multiple occasions. The projected cost of the project is approaching $8 billion, more than twice the original estimate.

The pipeline got fast-tracked to completion last summer with the passage of the Fiscal Responsibility Act, a spending deal that required the approval of all remaining permits for construction. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a Democrat turned independent, inserted the language into the bill over the objection of Virginia’s senators.

Landowners, environmental organizations, a group of Virginia state lawmakers and three county commissions have written to FERC urging it to deny the pipeline approval to enter service.

Federal Pipeline Regulator Oversees 3 Million Miles, Including MVP

Curtis Tate spoke with Cynthia Quarterman, the former head of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration from 2009 to 2014.

The Mountain Valley Pipeline is under scrutiny from federal regulators after it failed a pressure test in Virginia last month.

Curtis Tate spoke with Cynthia Quarterman, the former head of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration from 2009 to 2014, about the federal agency’s role in regulating 3 million miles of pipeline.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Tate: What role does PHMSA play in commissioning a pipeline? Is it involved in the testing process? Or mainly once the pipeline begins operation?

Quarterman: Ordinarily, I would say that it is more of the latter than the former. It’s involved after the pipeline gets into service much more than it is during construction. Now, that’s not to say that they are not involved. They do go out while pipelines are being put in and inspect them.

But the fact of the matter is, it’s so few inspectors and so many miles of pipeline that it’s difficult to get everywhere you want to be. Just looking at the record on this pipeline, it looks like the agency is saying they’ve been out 200 and something days, which sounds like quite a few times, although that’s been over many years. (The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) is the one who decides that it is OK for them to proceed with building a new pipeline. And they are responsible for ensuring that the construction of the pipeline meets all the safety standards.

Tate: The MVP is under a consent decree with PHMSA over the integrity of the coating on the pipe that prevents corrosion. What is PHMSA looking for? How would they enforce it?

Quarterman: The MVP has to prove that they’ve met the terms of the consent decree. I haven’t seen the terms of consent decree in a great detail. So, I don’t know if they have required a third party that PHMSA chose to look at what MVP has done, but the coating and the pressure test are extremely unlikely to be related.

The issue of having pipeline around for a long time, especially if it’s already coated, is that the coating can disbond from the pipe. Crevices and cavities, where corrosion could then be created because of water seeping in under the coating and that one spot becoming a pit and becoming corroded. Unlikely to have the kind of effect in this time period to make the pressure test fail. I’m just shooting off the hip here. It’s probably related to some sort of a problem at the seams or the welds, and less likely to be corrosion. On to the point where it’s created a pit so big that it’ll cause the pipe to fail from the pressure test. This is something that is not necessarily required to be reported to the public, so we’ll see if PHMSA requires MVP to tell them what the cause was, and whether that gets communicated more broadly.

Tate: PHMSA is a relatively small agency overseeing a vast system of pipelines, right?

Quarterman: Yes, it is. And when I left, one of the things I was pushing for more inspectors and the numbers have grown substantially since then, but you’re still talking about a couple of hundred people who are overseeing 3 million miles of pipeline.

Tate: MVP crosses through some very rugged and remote terrain, with very steep slopes. Can it carry gas safely under high pressure?

Quarterman: It is certainly the safest way to carry oil and gas across the country. I have been out for inspections. I remember going out to some of the pipeline inspections where it looks like you’re going up a mountain. The pipeline is going up and coming down the other side. Obviously, there are pipelines under a great deal of the rivers and streams across the country. And for the most part, you have no idea they’re there, because they have been operating for so long without a problem, but there are occasions when horrible things happen, obviously.

Tate: The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission must soon decide whether to allow the MVP to begin operation. What should we expect?

Quarterman: I don’t know anybody over at FERC. I don’t have any inside knowledge. They’re pretty independent. So they’re going to make an independent decision about this. Hopefully, they will have a conversation with their sister agency PHMSA to talk about what is the current status of the consent decree, what they think about what happened with the pipeline. I’m hoping that they discuss with PHMSA what it means. I don’t know that they will. They tend to be pretty independent, meaning they don’t always, always reach out to speak to other people when they make their decision.

Tate: How persuasive is the public comment FERC receives?

Quarterman: I’m sure it’s considered. Now I’ve practiced before the rate hearings but I’ve never worked there. I don’t know who the current commissioners are, where their leanings are or anything like that. It’s going to depend upon the chairman of that commission and where they want it to go, whether they have the votes to either push it forward or delay it further.

Wind, Solar Leave Coal In The Dust So Far This Year, Data Show

Renewables outpaced coal in the first five months of the year, growing a gap that began last year.

By the end of May last year, wind and solar barely edged out coal in the nation’s electricity mix.

The gap has grown wider this year, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Wind and solar combined generated 288 million megawatt hours from January to May, 10 percent more than coal.

For the first five months of 2023, wind and solar generated 253 million megawatt hours, 1.5 percent more than coal.

Wind alone surpassed coal in March and April. It’s typical for coal generation to drop during those months because plant maintenance tends to occur between winter and summer.

The federal agency forecasts that wind and solar generation will surpass coal for all of 2024.

For now, natural gas remains the nation’s dominant fuel for electricity. Renewables, meanwhile, especially solar, are growing rapidly.

The EIA forecasts a 75 percent increase in solar generation from 2023 to 2025 and an 11 percent increase in wind generation. It forecasts coal generation to decline 18 percent.

Groups Challenge FERC Ruling On Mountain Valley Pipeline Extension

The legal challenge comes as another decision looms before FERC: whether to approve the 303-mile MVP to begin operating.

A group of environmental organizations is challenging a federal decision to give the Mountain Valley Pipeline three more years to build an extension from Virginia into North Carolina.

Appalachian Voices, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Natural Resources Defense Council and other groups petitioned the U.S. Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia Tuesday to review the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s decision to grant the MVP more time.

MVP’s builder, Equitrans Midstream, now has until June 2026 to complete the project, called MVP Southgate.

The legal challenge comes as another decision looms before the FERC: whether to approve the 303-mile MVP to begin operating.

Equitrans had requested an in-service date of May 23, but told the commission this week that it was completing construction and testing and wouldn’t be ready until the first week of June.

The environmental groups had asked FERC to reconsider its December decision granting the three year extension for MVP Southgate. FERC declined to do so last month.

Some of the same groups, and state and local officials, have asked FERC to deny MVP’s application to begin moving as much as 2 billion cubic feet of natural gas a day from West Virginia into Virginia.

On May 1, the pipe burst during a water pressure test in Bent Mountain, in Roanoke County, Virginia. Local residents say that part of the pipeline was installed in 2018.

On Wednesday, the Roanoke County Commission asked FERC to not permit MVP to begin operating until all safety testing is complete. The commission also asked that FERC and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration share their findings on why the pipe failed the hydrostatic test.

MVP is projected to cost nearly $8 billion to complete, more than twice the original estimate.

Mountain Valley Pipeline’s Completion Delayed Again, Builder Says

In a letter to FERC Tuesday, the company said it expects the pipeline to be ready to operate in early June.

The Mountain Valley Pipeline won’t be ready to begin operations this week, the project’s builder told federal regulators.

Equitrans Midstream had asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to approve its application to enter service on Thursday.

In a letter to FERC Tuesday, the company said it expects the pipeline to be ready to operate in early June.

Equitrans said it has to complete fewer than 10 welds and pressure test them with water. It said hydrostatic testing had been completed on 99 percent of the pipeline.

“Due to the extended construction duration to achieve weld-out, which has been associated with weather and environmental protection, Mountain Valley is adjusting its targeted in-service date to early June,” the company wrote to FERC.

Equitrans said it was not “premature,” as some critics had described, to approve the pipeline for service.

The project has drawn heavy opposition since its beginning in 2018. The May 1 failure of a water pressure test at Bent Mountain, Virginia, amplified the concerns of those living near it.

State and federal regulators have been muted on how closely they’ve been looking at the rupture, which released an unknown volume of water and sediment onto adjacent land.

The company is under a consent agreement with the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration to correct any safety flaws in the pipeline.

Construction on the 303-mile, 42-inch natural gas line underwent long pauses as opponents challenged the project in federal court. A spending agreement Congress approved last summer granted all remaining permits the pipeline needed.

Residents of Bent Mountain say the section of pipe that failed, near the entrance to the Blue Ridge Parkway, was installed six years ago.

It is undergoing a metallurgical analysis, but regulators have not said whether they will publicly disclose the results of that examination.

The latest cost estimate to complete the MVP is nearly $8 billion, more than twice the original projection. The legal challenges, as well as the increased cost of construction and materials have driven up the cost.

When finished, the pipeline will move as much as 2 billion cubic feet a day of gas from north central West Virginia to southern Virginia. The company is planning an eventual extension into North Carolina to supply utility customers.