Even an “Act of Congress” may not be enough to keep the Mountain Valley Pipeline out of trouble. Appalachia’s long-stalled natural gas takeout project appeared briefly freed from regulatory and legal hurdles after Congress incorporated an MVP mandate into the debt ceiling bill: the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA) of 2023. With the MVP provision, Congress effectively approved all necessary permits for the greenfield project without judicial review in order to expedite completion and initial commissioning of the pipeline. The FRA, which President Biden signed into law on June 3, appeared to instantly clear the way for MVP. But this suspense did not last long. Earlier this week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit again halted construction of the project, apparently in defiance of the FRA, setting the stage for a Supreme Court fight. In today’s RBN blog, we explain the latest developments and how they affect the MVP outlook.
Before we dive into what happened this week, let’s do a quick update on what the MVP project is all about. The pipeline is designed to connect Appalachian gas supplies to growing power generation markets in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast, including southern Virginia and, through the MVP extension Southgate, Carolina north The MVP mainline (dashed pink line in Figure 1) is a ~300-mile, 42-inch-diameter pipeline with an initial capacity of 2 Bcf/d, which the sponsor has said can be expanded by an incremental 500 MMcf/d . additional compression.
MVP Southgate (dashed purple line in Figure 1) was originally proposed as a 75-mile extension from the tailgate of the MVP Main Line near Chatham, VA to a terminus in Alamance County, NC, about 50 miles south of Virginia-North. Carolina border. Given the permit issues, MVP’s lead sponsor and potential operator, Equitrans Midstream Partners LP (EQM), had said it was reevaluating the extension and, since the FRA’s enactment, has asked the Commission for more time Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) until June 2026 — to complete it. (This presentation has stimulated strong opposition of its own. See our weekly NATGAS Appalachia report on the latest developments on MVP and other pipelines in the area.)
