MVP Completion in 2023 Gives New Hope for MVP Southgate in NC
It took an Act of Congress, but the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), which stretches from Wetzel County, WV, to Pittsylvania County, VA, will be, according to the builder and primary owner, Equitrans, completed and online by the end of this year (see Equitrans Announces Mountain Valley Pipe to Get Completed in 2023). Equitrans had big plans to expand MVP an extra 75 miles from Pittsylvania County to Alamance County, NC, a project called MVP Southgate. However, given the pushback and obstacles in completing the original MVP, Equitrans appeared to give up on Southgate last October (see Equitrans Signals Giving Up on MVP Southgate – Pulls Eminent Domain).
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We have an update to a project we first told you about in June of last year called the Southside Reliability Enhancement Project (see 
In February, MDN brought you news about a “last mile” pipeline from Dominion Energy (see 
This is, indeed, a sad day. Last Thursday, Mountain Valley Pipeline LLC (MVP), which is majority owned by and is operated by Equitrans Midstream Corp., filed a notice to voluntarily dismiss eminent domain proceedings against landowner holdouts in North Carolina for land needed to build an extension of MVP into the state, called MVP Southgate. An Equitrans spokesman said the company hasn’t given up on the Southgate extension. We don’t believe it for a New York minute. We’ve seen this movie before when PennEast Pipeline canceled eminent domain, first in Pennsylvania (see 
Most of our coverage about pipelines is for large interstate pipelines, or perhaps large regional gathering pipeline systems. Every now and again we’ll bring you news about a “last mile” LDC (local distribution company) pipeline–the pipes utility companies install and maintain to run gas to homes and businesses. We have a story of that sort for you today. Dominion Energy, a huge utility company that used to be in the pipeline business (but sold its pipeline business to Warren Buffett a few years ago) wants to install a new 760-foot pipeline under the Blue Ridge Parkway (managed by the National Park Service) in North Carolina.
When was the last time you heard about a state legislature with the guts to reject a governor’s nominee to head a regulatory agency because the nominee proved to be, well, dumb? Yeah, like never. Until now! The ranks of dullard bureaucrats are legion across the country, but you can count on one less dullard in North Carolina where the Republican legislature, after quizzing Democrat Gov. Roy Cooper’s nominee to head the state’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), determined she flunked because she didn’t know a darned thing about Mountain Valley Pipeline’s proposed Southgate project.
No doubt you heard about the ransomware attack on the Colonial Pipeline, a pipeline that flows a significant amount of refined products (gasoline and diesel fuel) from the Gulf Coast where it’s refined as far north as New Jersey. Most of the gasoline supply for states like North and South Carolina comes from the Colonial Pipeline. When the pipeline went offline for over a week, most gas stations in NC ran out of gas. It was panic city across the state. The outage pointed out the weakness of having most of a state’s supply of fuel provided by a single pipeline. Top officials in NC are equally (perhaps more) concerned that most of the state’s natural gas supply comes from a single interstate pipeline: the mighty Williams Transco pipeline.
Utility giant Duke Energy Corp. is in the process of modifying eight of its biggest coal-fired electric generating plants in North Carolina to burn natural gas instead. The work will cost Duke roughly $283 million. Work is already complete on six of the eight plants, with the final two slated to be done later this year. There is a tie-in with the Marcellus/Utica.
Williams, via its wholly-owned subsidiary Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line (Transco), has filed a lawsuit against Mountain Valley Pipeline (a competitor) over MVP’s plan to extend the pipeline an extra 75 miles from southern Virginia into North Carolina. Williams claims some of the land MVP wants to use under eminent domain crosses into Transco’s easements and building MVP so close to Transco may damage Transco’s pipeline and the cathodic anti-corrosion system that protects it.
Last August the North Carolina Dept. of Environmental Quality (DEQ) rejected a water permit for Equitrans’ proposed Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) Southgate project (see 
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.
The City of Monroe, North Carolina is a shining example of what other cities should do. The city recently launched a new LNG facility online (took three years to build). The city buys natural gas on the open market when the price is low, liquefies and stores it, and then regasifies it for use later–saving residents money. Smart folks running Monroe.
Democrat governors across the country are now mimicking the example set by the dictator of New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Cuomo abuses state power to reject fossil fuel projects (unconstitutional in our opinion), telling NY’s state environmental agency to reject all new pipelines. Roy Cooper, governor of North Carolina, is the latest Cuomo wannabe. Cooper instructed his state’s environmental agency, the Dept. of Environmental Quality (DEQ), to reject permits for Equitrans’ proposed Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) Southgate project. Which the DEQ did yesterday. The agency tried to disguise the rejection using lame excuses, but the reason for the rejection was politics, plain and simple.