Mountain Valley Pipeline Cost Goes Up $1.1B, Online by Late 2019

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The price tag to build the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline is going up. When first announced, the project, which will run from Wetzel County, WV to the Transco Pipeline in Pittsylvania County, VA, was originally estimated to cost $3.5 billion. That number was tweaked this summer to $3.7 billion. Now MVP (i.e. EQT Midstream) says it will cost a whopping $4.6 billion–more than a billion dollars higher than the original estimate. Why the big hike? Two things, says MVP: (1) A work stoppage imposed by the courts and by FERC (thank you Sierra Club), and (2) heavy rain. The rise in cost is due more the former rather than the later. It was only yesterday we ran a story about how much it costs, per mile, to build a major pipeline in the northeast (see How Much Does it Cost to Build a Pipeline in the Northeast?). The costs to build all northeast pipelines continue to rise because of frivolous lawsuits by groups like the Sierra Club (nasty organization). We told you yesterday that it’s costing MVP’s chief competitor, Dominion’s Atlantic Coast Pipeline, $8.5 million per mile to build. Doing the math with the new/higher cost, the 303-mile MVP project will cost $15.2 million per mile to build! Ouch. The one bit of good news coming from MVP is that they say the project is still on track to be built and flowing gas by the end of 2019…

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