Update on Mountain Valley Pipeline, Questions & Answers, Part 2

Mountain Valley Pipeline Delayed: 4 questions answered
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From an Article by Carlos Anchondo, Energy Wire, E & E News, 10/19/2023
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The Mountain Valley Pipeline is now being completed under the various stream in West Virginia and Virginia. An extension into North Carolina has not been approved. This 42 inch diameter steel pipe will operate at high pressure of natural gas, having a plastic coating that has been weakened by months of exposure to sunlight and weather conditions because of various delays. Recently, the completion date was extended and the total cost was increased.

3. What effect could protests have?

Mountain Valley is opposed by a variety of groups, ranging from landowners that live along the project’s route to several environmental and activist groups. While they aren’t likely to stop construction, they could slow it down.

Some opponents have taken an approach focused on monitoring construction and documenting the pipeline’s progress. Volunteers with groups like Preserve Bent Mountain in Virginia and POWHR watch for possible violations in the field, which they report to federal government agencies.

Other groups have taken a more direct tack since construction on Mountain Valley resumed. Appalachians Against Pipelines, for example, regularly posts photos and videos of protesters walking onto construction sites and attaching themselves to equipment.

This week, dozens of self-described “pipeline fighters” walked onto a Mountain Valley construction site near Elliston, Va., which is southwest of Roanoke, Va. On X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter, Appalachians Against Pipelines said five people were arrested but were eventually released.

Formed in February 2018, Appalachians Against Pipelines on its website describes Mountain Valley as a “hazardous project” that “will disrupt delicate ecosystems, harm communities, and increase international dependence on fossil fuels.”

Photos posted to the group’s social media pages as recently as this month show protesters on work sites. Captions describe how long the people delayed construction activity. In one image, a woman sits on a piece of equipment in Virginia with her hands obscured by duct tape.

“HAPPENING NOW! A pipeline fighter locked herself to MVP equipment near a boring site under the Bradshaw Creek and Bradshaw Road in eastern Montgomery County,” the photo caption reads, dated Aug. 26.

Some academic experts said the protests could be significant even if Mountain Valley is completed as expected. Dylan Bugden, an environmental sociology professor at Washington State University, said opponents’ actions could help to mobilize people that are already against Mountain Valley or more broadly opposed to pipelines generally. And it could bolster protesters’ own morale.

“I think this is the kind of thing that helps you develop an identity as a protester,” Bugden said. There’s also the “possibility that others engaged in pipeline protests and other protests of fossil fuel extraction (and more widely calling for climate action) can draw strength from their efforts,” said Max Boykoff, an environmental studies professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, in an email.

Steve Roberts, president of the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce, expressed the group’s support for Mountain Valley “and for pipeline infrastructure, generally. The future will be different than the present, but for now and into the foreseeable future, natural gas is needed to help fuel our nation’s economy,” Roberts said in a statement.

The Virginia Chamber of Commerce also supports the pipeline and told the Agriculture Department in January that the project is expected to “generate millions of dollars in economic activity when it resumes its final phase of construction, and when it enters into service late this year.”

4. Will the debt ceiling law set a precedent for other projects?

Several environmental groups — as well as some lawmakers — have argued against the use of carve-outs in legislation for specific pipeline projects. Energy and legal experts said, however, that language like that in the debt deal is not likely to be enacted often.

Section 324 of the debt agreement came about amid several overlapping factors, including energy security concerns triggered by Russia’s war against Ukraine, a spike in natural gas prices from 2021 to 2022 and grid reliability issues, said Rob Rains, a senior energy analyst with Washington Analysis.

Including Mountain Valley in the debt ceiling law “took a significant amount of interest and desire to bring this forward that I think was unique from the circumstances,” Rains said. “In my mind, I don’t think this is going to set some kind of negative precedent because it’s such a selectively invoked means of moving ahead with a project,” he added.

ClearView’s Tezak said what happened with Mountain Valley isn’t “highly likely” to be repeated, pointing to a specific series of events that gave Manchin and Capito the momentum needed to get Mountain Valley in the debt ceiling law.

In comments in June, Manchin said Mountain Valley had been thoroughly vetted, would deliver thousands of construction jobs and would be an economic boon for people who own their natural gas rights.

James Coleman, a law professor at Southern Methodist University, said Congress’ action to help Mountain Valley points to flaws in the permitting process. Projects can be held up for years due to court fights, he said. If Congress did approve individual projects on a project-by-project basis, that would be a sign that underlying issues with permitting have gone unhandled, he said.

While Congress has used legislation to advance projects before — such as greenlighting the Trans-Alaska pipeline through legislation in 1973 — environmental groups said Section 324 of the debt ceiling law sends a bad signal to corporations about intervening in congressional affairs.

“Congress should be extremely wary of the dangerous precedent set by fossil fuel industry allies’ legislative end run to force approval for the fracked gas Mountain Valley Pipeline,” Ben Jealous, executive director of the Sierra Club, in a statement June 1.

What happened with Mountain Valley was a “clear short-circuiting” of a system where all projects go through the same kind of review, according to Noah Sachs, a law professor at the University of Richmond. Though rare, Sachs didn’t rule out that approach happening again because of how polarized Congress has become.

Action from Congress on Mountain Valley “suggests that it is open to resolving disputes that are pending before the federal courts to achieve a particular outcome, even when its action especially affects a particular party,” said Evan Zoldan, a law professor at the University of Toledo, in an email.

Zoldan referenced Patchak v. Zinke, a Supreme Court case concerning holding lands in trust for the Gun Lake Tribe. In Patchak and a separate case, the court has “upheld federal statutes that resolved a particular pending case,” he said.

The cases “demonstrate both that Congress is willing to resolve particular disputes pending before the federal courts and that the Supreme Court is amenable to this kind of action, separation of powers concerns notwithstanding,” Zoldan said.