What They Say vs What They Do by Ellen Bouton A DCMediaGroup article on October 27, 2016, reports that Loudoun County lawmakers and officials “are bewildered by Dominion Resources Inc.’s latest plans to upgrade a natural gas pipeline compressor station in Loudoun County, Va., less than two years after the company promised no new compressor expansions in the area would be forthcoming.” Dominion intends to add 7000 horsepower to the compressor station as part of its plan to increase capacity on its Cove Point pipeline. They say the increase is to meet local demand, but the Cove Point pipeline goes to the Cove Point LNG export terminal, and clearly gas headed there is headed for export, not for local consumption. One of the Loudoun supervisors said, “In the similar application a couple years ago, they said they weren’t going to do this again. They said they wouldn’t be coming forward with anything like this. If anything, they would downsize. So there’s a concern that, well, if you said that last time and now you’re coming forward with this, why should anybody believe anything you’re saying?” Indeed. The lessons we learn from Loudoun’s experience are unfortunately not new to us: We cannot trust what Dominion tells us about either pipelines or compressor stations Once a Special Use Permit is granted, Dominion will use it to expand beyond their original specification, ignoring local government and community concern and their own commitments Dominion will cite growing domestic need to grow their installations (despite U.S. Energy Information Administration data showing growing domestic surplus in short and long term) Dominion’s long term strategy is to build for export while citing domestic “public need” as an excuse for survey, eminent domain, etc.