The companies behind MVP Southgate, a proposed natural gas pipeline extension from southern Virginia into North Carolina, say they will significantly reduce the route’s planned length and no longer hope to build a new compressor station in Pittsylvania County.
Under a new plan, the proposed extension of the larger Mountain Valley Pipeline would run out of Pittsylvania County for 31 miles to natural gas delivery points in Rockingham County, North Carolina, instead of 75 miles into Rockingham and Alamance counties. The compressor station proposal already had faced a major setback after the Virginia Air Pollution Control Board denied it a permit in 2021.
Equitrans Midstream, which is the largest single owner in the MVP Southgate and Mountain Valley Pipeline ventures, estimated that the revised plan would cost around $370 million, down from $468 million. Most of the capital spending is expected to occur in 2027, with a targeted completion date of June 2028, the company said.
“In contrast to the original, lengthier project route and design, which required an additional compressor station … the revised project would include substantially fewer water crossings and would not require a new compressor station,” the Pittsburgh-based company said in a Dec. 29 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Compressor stations are located periodically along natural gas pipeline routes to compress the gas, which increases its pressure and gives it the energy needed to continue moving.
The $7.2 billion Mountain Valley Pipeline project is intended to transport natural gas 303 miles from West Virginia through six counties in Virginia, ending in Pittsylvania County, where the MVP Southgate extension would begin.
Equitrans said developers will finalize the MVP Southgate redesign after offering other potential natural gas market participants the opportunity to purchase pipeline capacity.
“Mountain Valley remains committed to the MVP Southgate project and helping meet public demand for affordable, reliable natural gas,” MVP Southgate spokesperson Shawn Day said in a statement Tuesday. “At the appropriate time, the MVP Southgate team intends to pursue all necessary permits and authorizations to complete construction of this important energy infrastructure project.”
Equitrans has said the main Mountain Valley Pipeline project is more than 90% done and is expected to be operational in the first quarter of this year. The project has been delayed by numerous legal and permitting challenges from landowners, environmentalists and others since it first was announced in 2014.
It received a boost this past summer, when Congress passed a federal debt-ceiling bill that included a provision authorizing any remaining government permits the pipeline needs and shielding those permit authorizations from further legal challenges.
Federal lawsuits challenging the project’s impact on endangered species and national forests were then dismissed, but a separate lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the project’s use of eminent domain to seize private land remains alive.
“Mountain Valley Pipeline and its Southgate extension have been poorly conceived from the beginning, but today some of the communities in harm’s way can breathe easier,” Appalachian Voices Virginia field coordinator Jessica Sims said in a statement following Equitrans’ SEC filing. “We know these changes resulted from sustained opposition to this unnecessary methane gas pipeline and its Southgate extension, and our opposition continues.”
MVP Southgate was first announced in 2018. In 2021, the state air pollution control board denied its Pittsylvania County compressor station permit application on a 6-1 vote, with one board member saying that granting the permit “would not promote environmental justice,” according to the Virginia Mercury.
The board determined that the permit did not meet “fair treatment” requirements under a 2020 state law, and that the site was not suitable for a compressor station based on state law and a 2020 appeals court decision that found Virginia had erred in issuing an air permit for another pipeline project’s compressor station planned for a predominantly Black community in Buckingham County, according to the Mercury.
The previous MVP Southgate plan was supported by a 300,000-dekatherm daily capacity commitment from the natural gas firm Public Service Company of North Carolina, Equitrans said. A dekatherm is a unit of natural gas volume.
Equitrans said in its filing that in late December it entered into new agreements with PSNC and a second, unnamed entity for a total of 550,000 dekatherms daily. Equitrans’ filing does not specify PSNC’s share of the new amount, and Day, the MVP Southgate spokesperson, declined to provide that detail.
PSNC is owned by Dominion Energy, although Dominion announced last year it would sell the company to the Canadian firm Enbridge Inc. in a deal expected to close this year.
[Disclosure: Dominion is one of our donors, but donors have no say in news decisions; see our policy.]
In addition to having 20-year terms with potential extensions, the new agreements include spending and termination protections in case the project is delayed or halted, or loses government authorizations, Equitrans said.
On Dec. 19, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which regulates the construction of interstate gas pipelines, granted Mountain Valley a three-year extension until June 18, 2026, to finish the MVP Southgate project.
That timeline extension was based on the original 75-mile route and would expire before the new Southgate plan’s anticipated completion date.
“Mountain Valley is evaluating the permitting and regulatory roadmap for the project, including requesting an updated completion due date, and will provide additional information to the Commission and other applicable permitting agencies as it continues with project development,” Mountain Valley Pipeline LLC said in a Dec. 29 letter to FERC.
