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UPDATE | Debt Ceiling Deal Would Clear The Way For Mountain Valley Pipeline

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By NPT Staff - May 30th, 2023

Editor's note: This updates with Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Virginia, trying to remove the pipeline provision from the debt ceiling agreement.

A deal between President Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, if approved by Congress, would clear the way for the Mountain Valley Pipeline between West Virginia and Virginia that has been held up by environmental challenges.

While pipeline champion Sen. Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, applauded the legislative workaround, Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Arizona, was highly critical. Sen. Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat, signaled he would try to have the provision removed from the debt ceiling agreement.

"Senator Kaine is extremely disappointed by the provision of the bill to greenlight the controversial Mountain Valley Pipeline in Virginia, bypassing the normal judicial and administrative review process every other energy project has to go through," a spokesman for the senator said. "This provision is completely unrelated to the debt ceiling matter. He plans to file an amendment to remove this harmful Mountain Valley Pipeline provision.” 

Manchin, who is the top recipient of campaign donations from the natural gas transmission and oil and gas industries, was happy to see the debt ceiling package contain language that would grant all the remaining permits needed for the Mountain Valley Pipeline to be completed.

"Last summer, I introduced legislation to complete the Mountain Valley Pipeline. I am pleased Speaker McCarthy and his leadership team see the tremendous value in completing the MVP to increase domestic energy production and drive down costs across America and especially in West Virginia," Manchin said Sunday evening. "I am proud to have fought for this critical project and to have secured the bipartisan support necessary to get it across the finish line." 

But Grijalva, the ranking Democrat on the House Natural Resource Committee, expressed great concern over the matter.

"Mandating approval of the Mountain Valley Pipeline is a disturbing and profoundly disappointing addition to this bill," he said. "Condemning Appalachian communities to generations of pollution and pain is a legacy that no one should be forced to vote for.”

Democrats on the committee say the debt ceiling agreement "legislatively approves all permits necessary for completion of MVP and blocks judicial review of all permit approvals. Construction of the highly controversial MVP—a 303-mile gas pipeline extending from West Virginia to Virginia—has already racked up hundreds of water quality violations and been delayed by numerous legal challenges."

Back in 2017 the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved the project, which would send pressurized gas 303 miles through a 42-inch pipeline that would traverse national forest lands, part of the Blue Ridge Parkway, and bore beneath the Appalachian National Scenic Trail at Peters Mountain on the border of West Virginia and Virginia.

But opponents have succeeded in bringing a number of lawsuits that have slowed the multi-billion-dollar project. According to the Roanoke Appalachian Trail Club, Virginia's U.S. senators have opposed Manchin's efforts to see the pipeline exempted from further environmental review. Also opposed to the pipeline, according to the club, is U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Virginia and a member of the conservative Freedom Caucus.

"(M)any Virginians I know who live in the path of the MVP are opposed to its completion," Griffith said last summer.

During last fall's budget negotiations in Congress, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Virginia, opposed efforts to push through the pipeline without going through appropriate regulatory channels.

"Like so many Virginians, I’m relieved we defeated the attempt to greenlight the Mountain Valley Pipeline without normal administrative and judicial review," he said then.

At the Roanoke Appalachian Trail Club, Diana Christopulos said Tuesday that it was hard "to believe the Biden administration is doing this, except that Joe Manchin is facing re-election and demands it. The statements surrounding it are complete falsehoods — neither in the national interest nor cheaper source of natural gas. It would require future court cases to go to the DC Circuit, which just challenged FERC for not doing a Supplemental EIS due to all the MVP violations."

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