MVP Southgate natural gas pipeline will no longer cross Alamance County

The green lines show the original route of the MVP Southgate natural gas pipeline. Alamance County is no longer in the project path. However, the pipeline owner has not yet published a new map of the redesigned route. (Base map: MVP Southgate)

The controversial MVP Southgate project will be shortened by more than half and no longer pass through Alamance County, according to public filings by Equitrans Midstream, the majority owner and operator of the natural gas pipeline.

Based in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, Equitrans Midstream announced the project’s proposed redesign in its filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission on Dec. 29. The project has not been finalized; nor has the company published a new route map.

MVP Southgate was to traverse more than 70 miles, starting from Pittsylvania County, Virginia, then entering North Carolina near Eden, in Rockingham County. From there, the route would have traveled southeast through Alamance County, ending near Haw River.

Now the pipeline will travel just 31 miles and end in Rockingham County. There, the routing will also likely change, according to a letter from Equitrans Midstream to federal regulators.

MVP Southgate is an extension of the embattled MVP main pipeline, which would run from a fracked gas operation in West Virginia through environmentally sensitive and precarious terrain in Virginia. The main line is more than five years behind schedule because of several successful legal challenges by environmental advocates and permit denials by Virginia environmental officials.

Equitrans Midstream didn’t answer emailed questions about what prompted the route change, but instead directed Newsline to a letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, also known as FERC, dated Dec. 29.

In that letter, Equitrans Midstream wrote that it had entered into agreements with PSNC and an unnamed “investment grade utility customer” that “contemplate a redesigned project.”

The timing of Equitrans Midstream’s announcement is curious. In mid-December, FERC approved the company’s request for an extension of time until June 2026 to complete MVP Southgate, three years later than originally proposed. (The project has been delayed because of permitting and legal problems with the main MVP line. Only after West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat, succeeded in inserting a go-ahead for the main line into the federal debt ceiling package that Congress approved last June, could it proceed.)

Yet in its SEC filings, Equitrans Midstream estimates MVP Southgate will be complete in June 2028 — two years after the FERC extension expires.

A company spokesman didn’t explain the discrepancy between the dates, but in its letter to FERC, Equitrans Midstream noted it plans to request “an updated completion due date.” The company is “evaluating the permitting and regulatory roadmap for the project … and will provide additional information to the Commission and other applicable permitting agencies as it continues with project development.”

Equitrans Midstream is seeking new natural gas shippers for the revised MVP Southgate project. This is called an “open season,” during which potential shippers bid for available capacity on the pipeline. After open season concludes, Equitrans Midstream “will finalize the scope and timeframe of the redesigned project,” the letter to FERC read.

The original route would have significantly harmed the environment, at least in the short-term. It  would have crossed 207 streams, three ponds and temporarily damaged 17,726 linear feet of streams, 6,538 square feet of open waters, and 14 acres of wetlands; another 0.02 of an acre of wetlands would have been permanently harmed. Nearly 14 acres of riparian buffers would have also be affected. MVP Southgate would have also crossed Stony Creek Reservoir, the main drinking water supply for the City of Burlington.

Without a map of the new route it’s unclear whether MVP Southgate will still cross the Dan River as originally planned.

There could be fewer regulatory hurdles with the redesigned MVP Southgate route. It no longer requires an additional compressor station in Virginia, according to the SEC filings; that state’s air board denied Equitrans Midstream’s permit application in 2021. The new route also requires “substantially fewer water crossings,” the company wrote in its filings.

By shortening the mileage and canceling the compressor station, the project cost is estimated at $370 million, down from $468 million for the original route.

The water crossings would require their own permits, both federal — known as a “404,” issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — and state — known as a “401.”

In 2020, the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality denied a 401 water quality permit for the project, in part because it was contingent on the completion of the MVP main line. Most of the environmental harm would occur during construction, the Division of Water Resources wrote at the time. “Thus it finds it is inappropriate to unnecessarily risk impacting high-quality waters and critical drinking water supplies of North Carolinians.”

DEQ was also concerned that MVP Southgate could go the way of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. After blowing past the deadline by years and the project budget by billions of dollars, Dominion Energy and Duke Energy pulled the plug on the ACP in 2020. But by then, areas of North Carolina, particularly in Cumberland and Northampton counties, had already been excavated, wreaking enormous damage to the environment and private property.

Then-DEQ Secretary Michael Regan called MVP Southgate 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. North Carolina’s clean energy future is not dependent on adding more natural gas infrastructure.” Regan is now federal EPA administrator.

The original route would have also required Equitrans to buy — or acquire through eminent domain — 303 acres of private property in North Carolina alone. There is stiff opposition in Alamance County to the pipeline, especially among landowners whose property was targeted for the route. Those eminent domain cases would have likely been hashed out in federal court, which could have taken years to resolve, all while incurring significant legal fees.

With the news of the redesigned route, Appalachian Voices North Carolina Program Manager Ridge Graham urged FERC to cancel its approval of MVP Southgate. “The recent decision by FERC to extend Southgate’s federal certificate was dependent on the pipeline having a contract with another entity to buy the gas,” Graham said. “With a wholly new project that requires an ‘open season’ to find customers, FERC should cancel the original Southgate Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity and send the developers back to the drawing board.”

Crystal Cavalier-Keck is co-founder and director of 7 Directions of Service, based in Alamance County. “Whether Southgate is proposed to be one mile, 31 miles or 75 miles, we will only rest when this unnecessary and dangerous methane gas pipeline — as well as the main MVP pipeline — are canceled, and meaningful steps are taken to phase out fossil fuels immediately.”

From fracked well heads to gathering and transmission lines, compressor stations and liquified storage tanks, natural gas projects are the largest industrial source of methane in the U.S. Nationwide, they emit millions of tons of the potent greenhouse gas each year.

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