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 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.
“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 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.
Curtis Tate spoke with the organization’s executive director, Bill Caram, about its concerns with the project.
The Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) failed a water pressure test in Virginia earlier this month. The Pipeline Safety Trust urged federal regulators to take a close look at the failure. Curtis Tate spoke with the organization’s executive director, Bill Caram, about its concerns with the project.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Tate: What are some possible causes of a pipeline failure during a water pressure test?
Caram: Unfortunately, we don’t know much about why the pipe failed the hydro test. There’s so many possible reasons for that failure, some of which would call into question the integrity of the entire pipeline and others could be very narrow and specific to one manufacturing defect on that one piece that once you replace it, you’re fine. So we really don’t know enough to know how concerned or not concerned the public should be about the integrity of the pipeline because of that hydro test failure.
One of the big problems is there isn’t a lot of transparency and because of capacity limitations at the federal safety regulator (the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, PHMSA), really a lot is left up to the operators to conduct all these inspections and tests, and then PHMSA comes in after the fact and basically checks their records on the tests and inspections that they did. Really a lot is left up to the operators and so there’s very little transparency involved, because it’s not the regulator’s doing these inspections in these tests.
Tate: A lot of groups, and state and local officials, have urged the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to deny the MVP’s in-service request. Why did your organization stop short of calling for that?
Caram: Again, because we don’t know enough about why the test failed, we came short of asking for FERC to deny the permit. What we really hope is that the federal regulators, the safety regulator, PHMSA and FERC, issuing the permit are fully informed of exactly what went wrong in that hydro test and that they have their hands in it, and that there are answers to that, before any permit is approved. Ideally, all of that would be made available to the public as well. That’s really what we want to see and what we want to know. I don’t think you can say, just because a pipeline failed a hydro test means it’s unfit for service. But it could, and so we would know exactly what went wrong and why and that there is an assurance to the public that the pipeline will be safe once it’s put into service. And that they’re transparent enough that the public really does feel really reassured, and I don’t think any of that is happening right now.
Tate: The Pipeline Safety Trust was founded after a fatal pipeline explosion. Can you tell us more about what you do?
Caram: We were founded after a pipeline tragedy here in Bellingham, Washington. In 1999, a hazardous liquid pipeline carrying gasoline ruptured and it spilled a quarter million gallons of gasoline into a creek that runs through the middle of town. It eventually ignited and it killed three boys, two 10-year-old boys and an 18-year-old. The families of those boys and the community, as they learned more and more about what went wrong in that pipeline tragedy, about the egregious actions, negligence from the operator and the complete lack of oversight from the federal government, they began calling for a national watchdog organization on the pipeline industry and its regulators. They lobbied to the Department of Justice to help found this organization and they were successful.
When the settlement of the Olympic Pipeline Company happened, the criminal settlement, part of the money that they had to pay was set aside to form that watchdog organization and that’s what became the Pipeline Safety Trust. We work on a national level trying to bring accountability to both the pipeline industry and its regulators, both the federal and state regulators and to make pipelines safer to try to prevent any other community from having to go through the senseless grief from these preventable failures and tragedies that plagued Bellingham.
Tate: Is it appropriate for people who work for pipeline companies to be appointed to lead the agency that regulates them?
Caram: No industry polices itself well. It’s a hard balance to find where you want someone who is informed enough about the industry and the technical particulars to be an effective regulator. But you also don’t want someone who is part of that industry, because they don’t police themselves well, that can be a difficult balance to strike. I would rather err on the side of being an objective third party than having an industry insider.
But I think the biggest problem with the federal regulations is really the amount of resources that are given from Congress. There is no way that they can be as effective of a regulator that we need in this country. Given the resources that they’re provided from Congress, they need a lot more. They also have a lot of restrictions put on them by Congress, where they’re adopting a new regulation. If it’s construction, or design standard, or things like that, it can’t apply to existing pipelines, it can only apply to new and replaced pipelines. They’re the only safety regulator in the country to have this in their defining statute. Where they cannot do a really extensive cost benefit analysis of any rule. And they have to justify any new rule by weighing how much it’s going to cost the industry versus what the benefits are. We’re talking about people’s lives. That really seems inappropriate to us as a safety watchdog.
Tate: What are your broader concerns about MVP?
Caram: We have a very large high pressure pipeline here when we’re talking about the Mountain Valley Pipeline. And through very steep terrain that has a history of land movement and landslides with pipe that was left out in the sun, damaging UV rays for far longer than the manufacturer’s recommendations. I don’t think we can be too careful. And I don’t think that the regulator and the operator can be too transparent. I think there’s a responsibility of the operator and the regulator to ensure that the community around this pipeline feel safe.
And I do want to commend PHMSA for issuing that safety order that became the consent agreement between Equitrans (the pipeline’s builder) and PHMSA that does take some extra steps. But the next step is assuring the public that, that consent agreement is on track and is being met as they as Equitrans seeks the permit to start the pipeline up.
The Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, decided in favor of a family whose land was condemned to build the controversial 303-mile natural gas pipeline.
A federal appeals court has reinstated a larger jury verdict for some landowners affected by the Mountain Valley Pipeline.
The Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, decided in favor of a family whose land was condemned to build the controversial 303-mile natural gas pipeline.
A jury awarded the Terry family of Roanoke County, Virginia, more than $500,000 for an eight-acre easement taken by the pipeline’s builder.
A U.S. district judge then reduced the award to $261,000.
In a decision published on Tuesday, a three-judge panel reversed the district court’s judgment.
The decision comes as Equitrans Midstream, the pipeline’s builder, is working furiously to complete the project and has requested federal permission to begin operating by June 1.
State and local officials and residents have asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to deny the pipeline approval to begin operating.
Natalie Cox, a spokeswoman for Equitrans Midstream, said while the company believes the district judge was correct, “we look forward to concluding this outstanding issue and securing a final resolution in this matter.”
The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration has notified Equitrans Midstream that it’s required to repair or replace damaged sections of pipe.
A federal agency has told the builder of the Mountain Valley Pipeline that the pipe used in the project’s construction must be treated to resist corrosion.
As the $6.6 billion, 300-mile natural gas pipeline has been caught in a series of legal challenges, large sections of pipe have been left exposed to the elements.
Exposure to sunlight degrades the protective coating on the pipe that prevents corrosion.
The pipeline’s opponents have been calling on Equitrans Midstream to address the issue.
A federal appeals court last week dismissed two lawsuits against the project, eliminating a significant legal barrier to its completion but dealing a setback to its opponents.
On the morning of April 29, a natural gas transmission line exploded in a field in Salem Township in western Pennsylvania. The blast was so powerful it ripped a 12-foot crater into the landscape, burned a section of the field with a quarter-mile radius and threw a 25-foot section of the 30-inch steel pipeline 100 feet away. At the time of the explosion, a 26-year-old man was in his house, a few hundred feet away. He was badly burned, and his home destroyed.
When local fire chief Bob Rosatti arrived at the scene, the flames were so hot, he had to stay in his truck.
“They were massive—I would say 300 feet at the least,” Rosatti says. “That was the biggest fireball I’d ever seen in my life. Thank god it was in a rural area. It could have been a lot worse if it had been in a more populous area.”
Investigators think external corrosion on the pipe is to blame for the blast. But they are still poring over a decade’s worth of pipe inspection reports to determine exactly what caused it.
The explosion comes as the federal government is undertaking a new effort to make gas transmission pipelines safer. It has become an even more urgent issue now that the country is building more pipelines, especially in the Northeast. The fracking boom in the Marcellus and Utica shales is a big reason for that. The Department of Energy predicts Pennsylvania and Ohio will nearly double their natural gas production by 2030.
These natural gas transmission lines carry gas at high pressure across long distances. Currently, there are 300,000 miles of these lines in the U.S. And many residents who live in the path of these new pipelines are asking if they should be worried about accidents like the one in Salem Township.
“They need to find a safe way to move gas,” says Lisa Segina, a Salem Township resident who leases her land for $20 a year to a company that stores gas under her property. “I understand we need it, we need energy. But there are safe ways to do it.”
Credit Reid Frazier / Allegheny Front
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Allegheny Front
Two men walk the scene of a natural gas transmission line explosion in western Pennsylvania, April 29, 2016. The blast was so powerful it ripped a 12-foot crater into the landscape and burned a section of the field with a quarter-mile radius.
Segina says what upsets her the most is how long it took for the company to shut off the gas in the pipeline after the explosion.
“It was active for almost 55 minutes before they were able to shut it down, because someone had to drive 15 miles to shut this valve off,” she says.
Officials from Spectra Energy, the company operating the pipeline, declined to be interviewed for this story. But in an email, company spokesman Creighton Welch says the industry standard is to shut off pipelines within an hour of any incident. He says the company also performed all federally mandated inspections—including an in-line inspection (ILI) in 2012, which tests the strength of the pipe from the inside. According to Welch, that inspection “revealed no areas requiring repair or remediation before the next inspection.”
Overall, pipelines have steadily gotten safer over the past few decades—though more than 300 serious pipeline incidents have resulted in 132 deaths in the past decade, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.
Suburban Pittsburgh resident Rob Brown is among those who are uncomfortable with his home’s proximity to a pipeline. Brown lives in Murraysville, where Dominion Transmission wants to put a large natural gas pipeline through his property, about 200 feet from his back door. When Brown first heard about the pipeline, he thought about moving. News of the explosion jolted him—and raised the alarm for people in his suburban neighborhood.
“Something like that happens to a neighbor, the word spreads,” Brown says. “It’s not safe. There’s a definitely a risk.”
But Frank Mack, a spokesperson for Dominion Transmission, says that—by the numbers—moving natural gas via pipeline is the safest form of energy transportation in the U.S.—far safer than transporting other fuels by rail or truck. He says the company uses various methods, including aerial and ground inspections, to keep its pipelines safe.
Earlier this year, the federal agency in charge of pipeline safety proposed new rules that add more protections for areas like Brown’s Murraysville neighborhood. The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) proposed the rules in response to a 2010 explosion in San Bruno, California that killed eight people. A draft of the new rule noted that “the nation’s existing, and in many cases, aging, pipeline system is facing the full brunt of this dramatic increase in natural gas supply and the shifting energy needs of the country.”
As the rules are currently written, pipelines in densely populated areas undergo the most stringent safety inspections. But the agency is proposing to extend some of these protections to suburban and less-populated areas. PHMSA also wants to add more pressure testing for older lines. A separate rule could mandate increased use of automatic shutoff valves, which would have stopped the Salem Township fire sooner.
PHMSA did not respond to interview requests for this story. But Stacey Gerard, the former safety chief at the agency, says the rate at which the regulators can tighten safety rules for pipelines is slow. She says any new rule must pass a cost-benefit analysis. If the projected costs of imposing the rule outweigh the benefits, the government can’t pass it—even if those benefits include avoiding property damage, injuries and deaths.
For example, a rule that saves a human life must yield a benefit of $9.4 million—an amount determined by a federal government metric known as the “value of a statistical life.” Gerard says that hampers the ability of the agency to impose safety regulations.
“The societal benefit of people being able to sleep at night is hard to quantify,” Gerard says. “We’re not going to get all the improvements we’d like. There are actions the agency would like to make that, if they can’t come out with a positive [cost-benefit] analysis, it won’t make it into the rule.”
Further complicating matters is the fact that most pipelines were built in places that once were rural but are now seeing increased development. Today, more than 12,000 schools in the U.S. are within 1,000 feet of a major natural gas transmission line.
Gerard says decisions about where to site pipelines are often made at the local level, which makes the job of federal safety officers even harder.
“You have the challenge of getting the energy to the people who need it. And for the foreseeable future, we’re a fossil fuel-oriented economy,” she says. “For at least the next 20 years, we have to figure out how to do this safely.”
This story is part of The Allegheny Front’s series Follow the Pipeline, which explores the health and environmental impacts of the region’s expanding natural gas infrastructure. Data visualizations by Dave Mistich, West Virginia Public Broadcasting.
