Celebrate! Dominion Wins DOE Approval for MD LNG Export Facility

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celebrateIt’s been a long, hard fight. Dominion has finally won approval from the Dept. of Energy (thank you new Secretary Ernest “Hair” Moniz!) to build a liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facility at their Cove Point, Maryland location. The LNG facility will allow Dominion to super-cool and condense natural gas to a liquid state–Marcellus and Utica Shale gas–and export it to India and Japan, countries who are allies of the United States but don’t have a free trade agreement with us. This is great news for those two countries who previously signed deals with Dominion to take 100% of the LNG the Cove Point facility can produce (see Dominion’s Cove Point LNG Facility Achieves Important Milestones). It’s also great news for Maryland: Dominion will spend between $3.4-$3.8 billion to build the plant.

The new facility has been opposed by the Sierra Club and other well-known anti-drilling organizations because they believe the facility will encourage more fracking (see Sierra Club, Others Trash Talk Cove Point LNG Export Terminal). With this approval from the DOE, Dominion says they plan to begin construction next year, in 2014, and that the facility will be online and shipping in 2017…

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