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mvp southgate
'Hard-Won Movement Victory': MVP Extension in NC Halved
"Mountain Valley Pipeline and its Southgate extension have been poorly conceived from the beginning, but today some of the communities in harm's way can breathe easier," said one campaigner.
Dec 30, 2023
Frontline critics of the Mountain Valley Pipeline celebrated after Equitrans Midstream revealed Friday in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that the distance of the proposed Southgate extension project has been cut in half.
The partially completed MVP project—long delayed by legal battles until congressional Republicans and President Joe Biden included language to fast-track it in a debt limit deal earlier this year—is set to cross 303 miles of Virginia and West Virginia.
The MVP Southgate extension into North Carolina was supposed to be 75 miles, but the filing details plans for a redesigned 31-mile gas project that "would include substantially fewer water crossings and would not require a new compressor station."
Responding to the development Friday evening, Denali Nalamalapu, communications director of the Protect Our Water, Heritage, Rights Coalition, said that "despite receiving a free pass from the federal government, the MVP continues to crumble before our eyes. For nearly 10 years, communities along the route have declared this project impossible and deadly. Now, after meeting with its clients, we see further admission from MVP that they can't follow through with the foolhardy plan they set out with."
"This news is a win for the movement that will be celebrated by emboldened resistance in the new year."
"This news is a hard-won movement victory: Fewer people will be harmed now that the Southgate extension plan has been halved," she stressed. "The MVP has always known it poses a horrific danger to the communities along the route—but their bottom line takes priority."
"With this new plan, the company admits that fewer waterways will be harmed and a compressor station will be avoided, gesturing towards the devastating water pollution, air pollution, and health impacts it will and has caused," she added. "This news is a win for the movement that will be celebrated by emboldened resistance in the new year."
Appalachian Voices Virginia field coordinator Jessica Sims also welcomed the news as a win for communities on the frontlines of the climate-wrecking gas project.
"Mountain Valley Pipeline and its Southgate extension have been poorly conceived from the beginning, but today some of the communities in harm's way can breathe easier," Sims said Saturday. "We know these changes resulted from sustained opposition to this unnecessary methane gas pipeline and its Southgate extension, and our opposition continues."
The new Equitrans Midstream filing follows a pair of Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) orders last week, one that allows MVP to raise gas transportation rates and another that extends the timeline to build the extension.
"The recent decision by FERC to extend Southgate's federal certificate was dependent on the pipeline having a contract with another entity to buy the gas," Appalachian Voices North Carolina program manager Ridge Graham noted Saturday.
"With a wholly new project that requires an 'open season' to find customers," Graham argued, "FERC should cancel the original Southgate Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity and send the developers back to the drawing board."
With MVP opponents "facing increased repression from the state and the companies behind the pipeline," another group that has spent years battling the project, Appalachians Against Pipelines, is calling for solidarity actions across the United States January 29-31 "to bring the fight to every company and bank involved."
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'Appalling': Mountain Valley Pipeline Gets Two More Federal Approvals
"We are extremely disappointed but never surprised by the results of a system created for profit," said one campaigner. "We will never give up on defending our lives, and the natural environment that makes life possible."
Dec 20, 2023
Frontline climate campaigners renewed pledges to continue fighting against the Mountain Valley Pipeline on Tuesday, when U.S. federal regulators decided that MVP could raise its gas transportation rates and have more time to build an extension.
"The federal government claims to recognize the urgency of the climate crisis while allowing the fossil fuel industry to further it,"
said Russell Chisholm, managing director of the Protect Our Water, Heritage, Rights Coalition, in response to the pair of Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) orders.
"During the past decade of repeated delay, budget increase, and environmental violation, thousands have resisted the reckless Mountain Valley Pipeline and its Southgate extension, and we are never going away," he vowed. "Our resistance is the fossil fuel industry's greatest nightmare; we are only growing more powerful."
"FERC's decision to extend MVP Southgate's certificate of 'public need'... is a crime against us and future generations."
MVP is set to cross 303 miles of Virginia and West Virginia, plus the Southgate extension into North Carolina. Largely thanks to outgoing U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), language to expedite construction of the partially completed gas pipeline was included in the debt ceiling law that President Joe Biden negotiated with congressional Republicans this year.
The new FERC order allowing the rate hikes—which critics worry will be passed on to customers—notes that MVP now estimates construction will cost over $6.6 billion, rather than the earlier estimate of $3.7 billion. It also says that MVP, a
joint venture involving five energy companies, "asserts that the primary drivers of the increased costs were permitting delays caused by ongoing legal challenges to the project, which have persisted since construction began in early 2018."
Jessica Sims, Appalachian Voices ' Virginia field coordinator, responded that "the Mountain Valley Pipeline's delay and ballooned construction costs are owed to the company's insufficient planning and choice of route, deficient permit applications, and lax construction practices. The resulting violations, fines, permit vacations, and consent orders are of the company's own making and they should not have been granted permission to financially pass those mistakes on to consumers."
Along with the rate order, FERC Commissioners Mark Christie, Allison Clements, and Willie Phillips approved a three-year extension for MVP to complete the North Carolina project. Commissioner James Danly did not participate in the decisions and the commission's fifth seat is vacant.
Appalachian Voices North Carolina program manager Ridge Graham called the move "appalling" while Jason Crazy Bear Keck, co-founder of 7 Directions of Service, said that "we are extremely disappointed but never surprised by the results of a system created for profit."
"FERC's decision to extend MVP Southgate's certificate of 'public need,' which subjects our streams, rivers, and community members to seizing of land and irreversible pollution, against our will, with no proof of need, is a crime against us and future generations," Keck added. "We will never give up on defending our lives, and the natural environment that makes life possible."
MVP opponents highlighted that Democratic North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper and other elected officials from the state have spoken out against the 75-mile extension, which was initially supposed to be completed this past June.
"This project is unnecessary for North Carolinians," said Emily Sutton of the Haw River Assembly, stressing the opposition from residents and officials including Cooper. "The health and safety of our communities and the Haw River watershed should not be jeopardized for the profits of fossil fuel interests. We will continue to fight to protect the people and places we love."
As FERC released its MVP orders on Tuesday, Appalachians Against Pipelines—which has been fighting the project for over five years—said that protesters are now "facing increased repression from the state and the companies behind the pipeline" and called for solidarity actions across the United States January 29-31 "to bring the fight to every company and bank involved."
"With every work stoppage, Mountain Valley Pipeline and their state collaborators have become more and more desperate to criminalize dissent," according to the group. "MVP is suing more than 40 activists across multiple jurisdictions in central Appalachia for millions of dollars. More than 20 pipeline fighters have been arrested on a variety of charges since this summer, including ludicrous abduction felonies."
Appalachians Against Pipelines declared that "we know why state and private forces are doing this—because they are terrified of the communities we have built, the fight we are waging, and because they know that we are unafraid and that we won't back down."
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Groups, Lawmakers Demand FERC Deny Mountain Valley Pipeline Extension for NC
"North Carolinians refuse to be led on by greedy energy corporations, and time and again our state's residents have told legislators and regulators this pipeline and its extension are not needed," said one campaigner.
Jul 25, 2023
The Sierra Club and other advocacy groups on Tuesday highlighted the growing chorus of residents, political leaders, and organizations opposed to a partially built fracked gas pipeline in West Virginia and Virginia along with a proposed expansion into North Carolina.
The latest wave of opposition to the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) comes in the form of public comments submitted to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) regarding a potential three-year extension to complete the Southgate project. Unlike the initial portion of the pipeline, construction has not begun on the North Carolina section.
"The future we want to build for our communities starts today, holding our regulators accountable and ensuring we never see the day when this dangerous and unnecessary project harms communities," said Sierra Club senior field organizer Caroline Hansley.
"North Carolinians refuse to be led on by greedy energy corporations, and time and again our state's residents have told legislators and regulators this pipeline and its extension are not needed," she added. "With no trees cut, no pipe laid, and no meaningful headway to commence construction, we ask decision-makers to deny this pipeline from ever harming these communities."
"With no trees cut, no pipe laid, and no meaningful headway to commence construction, we ask decision-makers to deny this pipeline from ever harming these communities."
Sierra Club joined Appalachian Voices, Good Stewards of Rockingham, Clean Water for North Carolina, Haw River Assembly, North Carolina Conservation Network, 7 Directions of Service, and the Protect Our Water, Heritage, Rights (POWHR) Coalition for a letter urging FERC "to find that there is no good cause to grant an extension of time for the project's certificate of public convenience and necessity."
"This is a clear opportunity for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to do its due diligence and protect the public interest and the environments of Virginia and North Carolina by sending MVP back to the drawing board," Appalachian Voices North Carolina program manager Ridge Graham said Tuesday.
Emily Sutton of Haw River Assembly argued that the Southgate project "provides no public necessity or benefit for North Carolinians that outweighs the destruction of the places that we love."
"The Haw River is a lifeline for our communities and the ecosystems that depend on it, providing drinking water, recreational access, flood control, and critical habitat for sensitive wildlife," Sutton explained. "This project threatens to irreparably destroy the health of this watershed. When given the opportunity to fight to protect it, our communities and the legislators that represent them made their voices heard."
Along with the coalition of advocacy groups, the NAACP Virginia State Conference, 22 Virginia legislators, 52 North Carolina lawmakers, Democratic North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, and Congresswomen Valerie Foushee and Kathy Manning, both North Carolina Democrats, sent FERC comments opposing the project.
Detailing their three main reasons for asking FERC not to extend the project's certificate, the congresswomen wrote: "First, the MVP Southgate is widely opposed... Second, North Carolina and Virginia regulators rejected permit applications for the MVP Southgate in 2021, and the company has failed to diligently pursue new applications."
"Finally, FERC's original need determination for the MVP Southgate pipeline is now woefully outdated," they continued, also calling for a new 30-day comment period for landowners and communities to weigh in on MVP, which remains tied up in legal challenges.
Last month, after President Joe Biden signed debt ceiling legislation he negotiated with congressional Republicans that included language to fast-track completion of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, FERC said the developer "has all necessary authorizations" for the project in West Virginia and Virginia, and "is therefore authorized to proceed with all remaining construction."
However, earlier this month a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuity temporarily halted construction of a section in the Jefferson National Forest. Despite the president's climate pledges and extreme heat sparking fresh demands for ditching fossil fuels, the Biden administration has joined the pipeline developer, U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), some GOP lawmakers, and other MVP proponents who are asking the nation's Supreme Court to block the order.
As two Western Pennsylvania Republicans in Congress also weighed in, Jamie Williams, president of the Wilderness Society—whose lawsuit led to the order pausing some MVP construction—told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Tuesday that those behind the pipeline are "attempting yet another end run around justice."
"Construction on the Mountain Valley Pipeline through the Jefferson National Forest has been on hold for years—the 4th Circuit has simply maintained the status quo while this ongoing, important legal challenge to the destructive pipeline is heard in court," Williams said. "The order halting construction is lawful, and it should alarm every American when Congress ignores the vital role of an independent court system in our constitutional structure."
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