MVP Southgate wants more time to build NC pipeline. Where do politicians stand?

With the MVP Southgate pipeline asking federal regulators for more time to complete construction, North Carolina’s politicians have started to again weigh in on a once-dormant debate.

The pipeline is either long-sought or long-opposed, often depending on where someone stands politically.

Republicans tend to argue that a second source of natural gas is vital to the state’s economic development and energy security. Democrats tend to argue the pipeline would destroy forests and wetlands to bring a soon-to-be-outdated form of fossil fuel into a state that’s moving toward a clean energy future.

The Mountain Valley Pipeline, which recently received strong support from Congress and the Biden administration, will carry fracked natural gas from West Virginia into Virginia. The 73-mile MVP Southgate extension would start at a compressor station in Chatham, Virginia, before following the Transco Pipeline’s route southwest and crossing into North Carolina in Rockingham County.

The pipeline would then turn southeast and head into Alamance County near Graham. It could carry as much as 375 million cubic feet of natural gas each day, which was originally set to be sold by Dominion Energy.

MVP Southgate has been mired in uncertainty brought on by questions about the main stem’s viability and permit denials from regulators in both Virginia and North Carolina. The pipeline’s owners are hoping to finish construction of the mainline by the end of 2023, according to their filing with Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, before again seeking permits for the southern extension.

U.S. Reps. Valerie Foushee and Kathy Manning, both Democrats whose districts MVP Southgate would pass through, asked the FERC to deny the pipeline’s construction extension. The project would threaten drinking water and pose “unreasonable risks to communities and the environment,” they wrote.

The N.C. Department of Environmental Quality found that construction of MVP Southgate would impact 301,994 square feet of regulated buffers; 13,986 linear feet of streams; and 12.4 acres of wetlands.

Foushee and Manning also pointed to the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, arguing it included significant grants intended to lower the need for natural gas that FERC cited when issuing its original construction permit.

“In light of this sea change, the Commission cannot — and indeed must not — merely fall back on its now stale prior determination that MVP Southgate is needed,” Foushee and Manning wrote.

‘A transformational project’

N.C. Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger, an Eden Republican, told The News & Observer that he has long supported MVP Southgate. The pipeline’s route would pass through the Rockingham County district Berger represents.

“This is a transformational project that will create jobs and boost our local economies. It is vital to our state’s growth and energy security to complete the MVP Southgate project. We cannot continue to rely on a single interstate transmission pipeline for our state’s natural gas supply,” Berger wrote in an email.

The Transco Pipeline is currently the only source of natural gas into North Carolina, a concern senators homed in on after the Colonial Pipeline hack in 2021 shut that facility down for a number of days. Unlike Transco or the proposed MVP Southgate pipelines, Colonial carries liquid fuels like gasoline, jet fuel and diesel fuel.

Berger was one of 29 Senate Republicans who signed a letter to FERC on Friday pledging their support for the MVP Southgate project.

The lone Republican senator who did not sign the letter was Amy Galey, whose district would, like Berger’s, house the completed pipeline. Galey has long expressed reservations about MVP Southgate, including voting in favor of a resolution opposing the project in 2018 when she chaired the Alamance County Board of Commissioners.

U.S. Sen. Ted Budd, a Republican from Davie County, recently told The News & Observer his all-of-the-above approach to energy includes support for the MVP Southgate extension.

“The cost of everything, whether it’s groceries or medical care, everything ties back to energy,” Budd told The News & Observer. “So we have to have more energy or we’re going to have a crisis here in a few years that we’re not producing enough energy.”

Budd also argued that the United States can build pipelines and similar projects in a manner that is less detrimental to the environment than other countries, particularly China. Not adding new sources of energy, Budd said, could result in the United States losing jobs to other countries.

“We need those jobs here where we’re being cleaner and safer and more humane than anywhere else in the world,” Budd said.

‘A permitting thing’

Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, told The News & Observer he is worried that bringing more natural gas to North Carolina could be inconsistent with bipartisan legislation that targeted reductions in carbon dioxide emissions.

“When Duke is considering building more natural gas plants, I worry about how that will affect costs to consumers if these are sunken costs that won’t be able to use these plants to their fullest ability,” Cooper said.

He later added that battery technology and advances in carbon-free power sources could quickly shift the state’s energy source away from fossil fuels

Berger sees approval of MVP Southgate as a key tool in shifting North Carolina’s energy generation away from coal and meeting the Carbon Plan’s goals.

“Completing the MVP Southgate project will bring our state a reliable energy source that also helps us achieve the environmental goals outlined in House Bill 951. If we are serious about reducing carbon emissions, we have to utilize all energy sources available to us,” Berger wrote.

House Bill 951, and Duke’s ensuing interpretation of the bill, focused solely on carbon dioxide emissions rather than the utility’s full greenhouse gas emissions. Many scientists have found that methane is a more potent, albeit shorter-lasting, contributor to global warming than carbon dioxide.

Last week, the N.C. Senate passed an updated version of this session’s regulatory reform bill, tweaking proposed rules around DEQ’s water quality certification process.

The agency previously denied a certification to MVP Southgate in North Carolina because, it said, it didn’t make sense to imperil the state’s waterways if the West Virginia and Virginia portions of the project weren’t going to move ahead.

“In essence, it would be a pipeline from nowhere to nowhere incapable of carrying any natural gas, and certainly not able to fulfill its basic project purpose, while having no practical alternative,” a DEQ hearing officer wrote in 2020.

The Biden administration’s support and the anticipated construction of MVP’s initial route have changed those assumptions. But in reissuing a water quality certification for the project, DEQ also said federal permits for the MVP mainline alone were not enough to justify damage to North Carolina’s environment, citing the project’s checkered history.

The regulatory reform bill says DEQ would have 30 days to decide if a water quality certification application is complete, then another 60 days to rule on it.

Berger said he agrees with the proposed changes.

“We cannot have an open-ended permitting process and setting a 90-day timeline avoids unnecessary delays.,” Berger wrote.

The deadline for public comment on the project is 5 p.m. on July 24.

This story was produced with financial support from 1Earth Fund, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners, as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The N&O maintains full editorial control of the work.