Published November 3, 2020 in the Pittsburgh Business Times
By Paul J. Gough Reporter, Pittsburgh Business Times
The long-delayed Mountain Valley Pipeline is being pushed back further and with further costs.
The controversial 303-mile pipeline that will carry Marcellus and Utica natural gas through West Virginia and Virginia will not be in service until the second half of 2021, according to a statement Tuesday in Equitrans Midstream Corp.’s third-quarter earnings report.
The pipeline’s most recent in-service date had been early 2021. The pipeline, which has increased in cost, will also rise from $5.4 billion to between $5.8 billion and $6 billion. Equitrans Midstream Corp. (NYSE: ETRN), which is based in Canonsburg, said it would fund $2.9 billion of the project and had already paid $2.1 billion toward it.
The Mountain Valley Pipeline had, after a number of setbacks in court, received many of the key permits that it had received including from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. But a court temporarily stayed one of the permits, the Nationwide Permit 12 that allows it to cross waterbodies, until the full court court hear an appeal. The U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals is scheduled to hear the arguments Nov. 9. Equitrans said another one of its recent authorizations from the federal government was being challenged, too.
MVP had been originally scheduled for completion in 2018 but that deadline slipped due to court battles with environmentalists, delays in receiving regulatory permits and weather. The most recent in-service date, early 2021, wasn’t able to be met due to construction delays and a stop-work order by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on a portion of the route.
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