Local lawmakers 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.

The planned compression expansion is part of a project that Dominion is calling Eastern Market Access, a project that will increase capacity on its Dominion Cove Point pipeline by about 294,000 dekatherms per day. Washington Gas, the natural gas utility for the Washington, D.C., metropolitan region, and Panda Power Funds, developer of the proposed Mattawoman Energy Center in Maryland, have agreed to long-term firm contracts for equal shares of the planned new capacity.

“In the similar application a couple years ago, they said they weren’t going to do this again,” Tony Buffington, Blue Ridge District supervisor on the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, said in an interview at an Oct. 26 informational meeting held by Dominion at a local elementary school. “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?”

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