Federal regulators on Tuesday gave the Mountain Valley Pipeline the green light to begin operating, a decade after the controversial natural gas project was first announced.
In a letter to the pipeline’s joint venture company, a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission official said the authorization was based on recent construction status reports, a staff inspection last month and communication with the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.
FERC regulates the construction of interstate pipelines. The PHMSA last year issued a safety order that grew out of concerns over the pipeline’s physical integrity after years of exposure to sun and weather; earlier Tuesday, a PHMSA official said that the agency had no objection to the pipeline being approved to operate.
“We find that Mountain Valley has adequately stabilized the areas disturbed by construction and that restoration and stabilization of the construction work area is proceeding satisfactorily,” Terry Turpin, director of FERC’s Office of Energy Projects, said in a letter to developers.
Mountain Valley Pipeline spokesperson Natalie Cox said in a statement that the company is “pleased with the agencies’ decisions and the related communications regarding in-service authorization for the MVP project.”
“Final preparations are underway to begin commercial operations,” Cox said.
The 303-mile, 42-inch-diameter Mountain Valley Pipeline is designed to transport up to 2 billion cubic feet of natural gas daily from West Virginia through six Virginia counties, ending at a Transco compressor station in Pittsylvania County. Developers and supporters have said it will meet a demand for natural gas; last summer, Congress passed a law speeding up the project’s completion.
Opponents have maintained that the pipeline is unnecessary, dangerous and harmful to the environment, and they have continually opposed it and its proposed $370 million MVP Southgate extension into North Carolina. The pipeline was first announced in 2014 with an anticipated completion date of 2018, but its price tag has more than doubled to $7.85 billion as it has been delayed for years by legal and permitting challenges.
Just this year, the pipeline’s developers on several occasions pushed back their estimate of when the project would be complete. But on Monday, they said that the pipeline was “mechanically complete,” that testing was done and that they wanted FERC to authorize it to go into service within a day.
In recent weeks, pipeline opponents have pointed to events such as the rupture of a pipe segment in Roanoke County last month during hydrotesting — in which highly pressurized water is pushed through pipes to verify their strength — and a lack of public information from the PHMSA as evidence that the project is not yet ready to be put into service.
On Tuesday, they decried FERC’s approval.
“Every system that claims to protect us has failed,” Russell Chisholm, a Giles County resident and co-director of the Protect Our Water, Heritage, Rights (POWHR) coalition, said in a statement. “We need real transparency and accountability for corrupt politicians and companies, and we demand a livable future amidst climate change.”
Jessica Sims, Virginia field coordinator for the nonprofit environmental conservation group Appalachian Voices, said that the pipeline developers’ “disregard for community and environmental safety has been clear.”
“Community members and environmental watchdogs have pointed out the flaws in this project for years, and these fundamental problems with the pipeline remain,” Sims said in a statement.