LNG

The US Supreme Court has removed all obstacles to completing the long-delayed $6-billion Mountain Valley Pipeline to send natural gas from West Virginia to the state of Virginia and onwards to consumers further South and being developed by energy company Equitrans Midstream.

The Court granted Mountain Valley Pipeline LLC's request to lift legal blockages imposed by a lower court that had halted construction of a final short section of the 303-mile (488km) natural gas pipeline.

That final section to be completed is a 3.5-mile (5.6km) corridor through the federally owned Jefferson National Forest.

The gas pipeline being developed by Canonsburg, Pennsylvania-based Equitrans has been delayed by numerous court decisions since construction began in 2018.

Investors

Equitrans is the lead partner building the pipeline with several other companies including NextEra Energy, Consolidated Edison, AltaGas and RGC Resources.

The Court’s ruling was in response to a request from Equitrans to overturn an appeals court orders in early July 2023 to stop building in the Jefferson National Forest while that court considered legal complaints from environmental groups against the project.

Legal challenges to the pipeline continued even after West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin and other politicians wrote to encourage a positive decision on the Mountain Valle Pipeline into the Debt Ceiling Bill in Congress.

“The Supreme Court has spoken and this decision to let construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline move forward again is the correct one,” Manchin said in a statement issued by his office.

“I am relieved that the highest court in the land has upheld the law Congress passed and the President signed,” added Manchin.

Final stage

Equitrans had argued that if it did not resume construction soon, it would have been unable to complete before winter weather arrives in November and halts work until the Spring.

The pipeline is designed to transport natural gas from the prolific Marcellus and Utica Shale Basins to the growing demand markets of the mid-Atlantic and southeast regions of the US where LNG export projects are expanding.

The 42-inch diameter pipeline that will link an existing transmission and storage system in Wetzel County, West Virginia, to the Transco Station 165 in Virginia.

The pipeline has capacity of 2 billion cubic feet per day and is fully subscribed under long-term contracts with a diverse group of shippers.

The US Supreme Court ruling just before the July 4 holiday weekend to limit the regulatory powers of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over emissions from power plants is seen reducing legal challenges on the US hydrocarbon industry, including against LNG export developments and natural gas pipeline infrastructure.

In a 6-3 opinion the Supreme Court in Washington DC ruled in the case of West Virginia versus the EPA that the federal agency did not have the authority to regulate industry greenhouse-gas emissions that would affect individual power plants.

The case stems from former President Barrack Obama's Clean Power Plan (CPP), which would have enforced mandates for how much GHG emissions from power plants were allowed.

The policy was never officially implemented as it faced legal challenges and was side-lined under the Administration of President Donald Trump.

Analysts said the Court ruling leaves the Administration of President Joe Biden dependent on passing legislation if it wants to introduce regulations to reduce GHG emissions at plants and facilities.

“A decision of such magnitude and consequence rests with Congress itself,” the Court ruled,

The justices stated that they doubted Congress intended to delegate the question of “how much coal-based generation there should be to any administrative agency” of the federal government.

Biden setback

Analysts added that the Court ruling marked a setback for Biden, who was elected President on an anti-hydrocarbon platform and several of his first moves included blocking oil and gas projects.

The most high-profile Biden cancellation was of the Keystone XL pipeline extension to deliver more cheap Canadian oil for refining in the US into petroleum products such as gasoline.

Biden and his Democratic Party also opposed LNG, a policy they have now rowed back on, and blocked the Jordon Cove LNG export project proposed for the northwest state of Oregon as an outlet to Asia for abundant US natural gas.

Biden has also pledged to remove carbon from the US power grid by the middle of the next decade, setting the country on a path to net-zero emissions.

However, his efforts to implement more extreme climate-mitigation legislation in Congress have stalled and could disappear after the mid-term elections in November 2022.

US lawyers were quick to comment and asserted that the Supreme Court ruling in the case for West Virginia, the US coal state, should be interpreted as a warning to federal agencies not to overstep their explicit statutory authority in crafting new regulations.

Though the Obama CPP never took effect, its opponents were concerned that a similar policy against coal, oil and gas could be enacted unless the courts intervened and this led to the West Virginia case.

The petitioners in the case were West Virginia, supported by the state of North Dakota, along with two coal companies and they asked the Court to decide whether the EPA had blanket authority to force changes in the power generation mix in the name of GHG reductions and the answer was no.