MOUNTAIN VALLEY PIPELINE/SOUTHGATE EXTENSION 101

Mountain Valley Pipeline has submitted a request to federal regulators asking permission to change the route, size and carrying capacity of its Southgate pipeline extension from Pittsylvania County, Virginia, into North Carolina. The public has until March 11 to submit comments to the FERC docket, as well as to file a Motion to Intervene (see below). 

Sign this petition to FERC!

After years of inspiring community resistance halted the project, MVP has resurrected Southgate with an “amendment” request to FERC, asking for a new route and increased pipe diameter that would crank up how much gas it could carry. With so many changes to its original plan, MVP Southgate should have to go through a new certification process with FERC, not just changes to its years-old certificate!

Your help is needed to oppose this Southgate déjà vu by advocating for more time for the public to weigh in and asking regulators to deny MVP’s amendment request and require a new certificate. The public has until March 11 to submit comments to the FERC docket, as well as to file a Motion to Intervene (see below). 

Individuals have the option to intervene in Federal Energy Regulatory (FERC) Commission proceedings. As an intervenor, it can allow individuals to become participants in a proceeding and have the right to request rehearing of Commission orders and seek relief of final agency actions in the U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeal. 

Pipeline operator Mountain Valley Pipeline, LLC submitted a new amendment to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for the methane gas pipeline “Southgate,” proposed for Virginia and North Carolina. Southgate would extend the controversial Mountain Valley Pipeline, and has faced significant opposition since it was proposed in 2018.

MVP made an amendment request instead of a new application and asked that FERC issue an order by December 31, 2025. Project opponents contend a new application should be required because the route and impact of the project are distinct from the original 2020 Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity issued by FERC.

Just 10 days after receiving a three-year extension on their federal certificate, MVP announced it had radically altered its plans for Southgate, changing the route, length and pipe diameter. As described in the amendment, Southgate would include 31 miles of 30-inch diameter pipeline in Virginia and North Carolina and had “entered into precedent agreements with Duke Energy Carolinas, LLC (‘Duke’) and Public Service Company of North Carolina, Inc, d/b/a Enbridge Gas North Carolina (‘PSNC’), both as Foundation Shippers.” 

The similarly routed proposed Southeast Supply Enhancement Project from Williams Companies’ expansion of the Transco pipelines also claims Duke will be a major customer. The co-location of two high-pressure, large diameter pipelines is of significant concern for local residents.

MVP’s amendment request will trigger a public comment period.

Check out these news stories:

Inside Climate News

Radio WVTF

Just before the close of 2023, Mountain Valley Pipeline Southgate Extension developers quietly announced major changes to their methane gas pipeline proposal, including cutting the total length in half and removing Alamance County from the route, increasing pipe diameter from 24 in to 30 in (wider pipes = more dangerous) and increasing capacity from 300,000 Dth per day to 550,000 Dth per day.

The new route would extend 31 miles from the terminus of the MVP mainline in Chatham, VA into Rockingham County, NC, and the pipe's diameter would be increased. According to developers, the revised plan would also mean fewer water crossings, and no additional compressor station, the permit for which MVP Southgate was denied on environmental justice grounds in 2021. The new plans are not yet finalized.

Co-Founder and Director of  7 Directions of Service, Dr. Crystal Cavalier-Keck, responded to the possible changes:

“As usual, MVP developers file before a holiday weekend to keep impacted communities in the dark and scrambling. Rightfully, these bad actors are afraid of our collective grassroots power and our growing movement of everyday people who stand together against MVP and MVP Southgate and all forms of new fossil fuel infrastructure to fight for life. Whether Southgate is proposed to be 1 mile, 31 miles, or 75 miles, we will only rest when this unnecessary and dangerous methane gas pipeline–as well as MVP mainline–are canceled, and meaningful steps are taken to phase out fossil fuels immediately.”

In 2018, construction on the 303-mile fracked-gas Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) began in Virginia and West Virginia. Construction has involved over 500 violations of permit conditions, laws, and regulations, and 75% of the route slices through landslide and earthquake-prone terrain, including sacred Indigenous burial sites, waterways, and the Jefferson National Forest. Frontline communities and Water Protectors have been fighting the harmful, unnecessary pipeline for nearly 10 years, and came extremely close to canceling it.

In June 2023, the MVP mainline was fast-tracked by Congress and the White House, a result of its corrupt inclusion in the nation’s must-pass debt ceiling legislation. The MVP provisions forced the approval of all remaining federal permits, and forbids judicial review of any permits. The provisions did not include fast-tracking the MVP Southgate Extension.

The MVP Southgate Extension is a proposed 73-mile extension of the MVP mainline, from Pittsylvania County, VA into North Carolina’s Rockingham and Alamance Counties that poses a grave danger to working class and farming families, and the entire ecosystem of the Piedmont region. The project would also force a third polluting compressor station to be constructed in a predominantly Black community near Chatham, VA. 

The proposed route is highly residential, and  large public schools like  Alamance Community College are within one-half mile of where the pipe would be laid. In its crossing of 200 streams and tributaries throughout the Dan and Haw River Watersheds, the MVP Southgate Extension would destroy habitats and recreational sites, and pose ongoing threats to water quality for downstream users.

Outraged by this unnecessary, greed-driven threat to our health, land and futures, everyday people have been pushing back against the pipeline by submitting comments, participating in hearings, writing to local newspapers and educating our neighbors.

In 2018, Alamance County Commissioners passed a resolution opposing Southgate that raised concerns about the pipeline’s impact on the county’s water quality. Later that year, officials in Stoneville, N.C., also passed a resolution in opposition to the pipeline, citing environmental concerns. 

Even the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality agrees that that MVP Southgate is an unneeded risk. In August 2020, the agency denied Southgate’s application for a Clean Water Act permit.

“This has always been an unnecessary project that poses unnecessary risks to our environment and given the uncertain future of the MVP Mainline, North Carolinians should not be exposed to the risk of another incomplete pipeline project,” said then-DEQ Secretary Micheal Regan in an August 2020 statement. “North Carolina’s clean energy future is not dependent on adding more natural gas infrastructure.”

 In 2021, the Virginia Air Pollution Control Board voted to deny the air pollution permit for the Lambert Compressor Station, on the basis of environmental justice concerns. This outcome was a result of tireless grassroots organizing and community members’ advocacy. 

Lambert would have been the third compressor station in the majority Black Banister District , and would have increased air emissions of carbon monoxide, particulate matter 2.5, and formaldehyde — substances known to contribute to respiratory problems, heart disease and cancer.

A July 2019 Applied Economics Clinic report found that PSNC Energy, the Dominion Energy subsidiary that contracted to buy most of the gas that would flow through MVP Southgate, overestimated how much gas they will actually need in the future. 

An economic analysis from 2020 indicated that existing gas infrastructure was more than sufficient to meet regional energy demand. Since then, the domestic and regional demand for natural gas has fallen, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.