Federal regulators are poised to approve the hotly contested Atlantic Coast Pipeline that would stretch for 600 miles from West Virginia, through Virginia and on to North Carolina.
The staff of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has completed a generally favorable final environmental impact statement for the $5 billion project that is likely to get a thumbs-up from FERC commissioners this month or next.
Barring problems with obtaining Virginia water permits, construction of the project could begin this fall, delighting Richmond-based Dominion Virginia Energy, the lead partner in the natural gas project. Cheering it on are politicians such as Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) and GOP gubernatorial hopeful Ed Gillespie. (The Democratic gubernatorial nominee, Ralph Northam, has stayed neutral on the project.)
Yet after several years of intense fighting between Dominion and Virginia property owners whose land would be taken for rights of way and ecologists worried about destruction of fauna and flora, there still are major, unanswered questions about the project. They include how the pipeline deal is structured, what ratepayers will be charged for and who pays if something goes wrong.
FERC has a history of approving most of the pipeline projects it reviews. It doesn’t delve too deeply into the economic viability of the projects, relying instead on whether customers have signed up to use the new pipelines. “There is no planning process. They [FERC] are less interested in the issue of need,” says Cathy Kunkel, an energy analyst at the Cleveland-based Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.
The Washington Post – Peter Galuszka – 09.01.2017
Posted by Nelson Bailey
0 Comments