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MVP Southgate Pipeline Gets Boost from 4th Circuit re NC Permit
Last August the North Carolina Dept. of Environmental Quality (DEQ) rejected a water permit for Equitrans’ proposed Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) Southgate project (see Politics: North Carolina Rejects MVP Southgate Pipe Permits). As we said at the time, although the DEQ tried to disguise the rejection using lame excuses, the rejection was political and prompted by NC Democrat Gov. Roy Cooper. Turns out not even the Dems on the federal U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit could stomach the transparent political motivation and last week overturned the DEQ’s rejection, telling the DEQ to do it over again.
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The good news for Equitrans’ 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) is that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit last week overruled North Carolina’s Dept. of Environmental Quality in rejecting a water permit for the project (see today’s lead story). However, MVP wasn’t letting last year’s DEQ action slow it down. In January MVP reluctantly filed eminent domain lawsuits against 100 landowners who refuse to reasonably negotiate an easement for the pipeline.
Ohio’s House Bill (HB) 6 is a law granting billions (plural) of dollars to FirstEnergy in an attempt to prop up the company’s economically failing nuclear power plants. FirstEnergy is accused of bribing state legislators to pass, and keep passed, HB 6 by paying out $61 million (see 
Last week MDN brought you news of a new forced pooling bill under consideration in this year’s West Virginia legislative session (see 
Last Saturday Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s office published, via the Pennsylvania Bulletin, a list of agency-by-agency regulations currently in development with an estimated schedule for future actions. In the list is the all-important (to the oil and gas industry) Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP). It’s been our observation when the government in general, and DEP in particular, changes a regulation, it typically makes it more onerous (and expensive) to comply with. Some of the upcoming changes to DEP regulations happening this year we’ve already warned you about. Others are new to us.
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