Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., is expressing optimism that a federal permitting reform bill may have some impetus, a move that is needed to speed up the completion of the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP).

Capito said Thursday during a virtual press briefing she thinks there is an “appetite” for making reforms and that appetite is “growing every day.”

The reason, she said, is that the slow federal permitting process for any energy project, including renewables, is long and cumbersome, often litigated and can take seven to 10 years to complete.

“A lot of bills Democrats have passed have a lot of renewable energy projects,” she said. “But if you can’t site a transmission line, if you can’t site a wind farm or solar panels, you can’t move forward with any projects, much less a Mountain Valley Pipeline that carries, very safely, natural gas.”

The MVP, a 303-mile 42-inch diameter natural gas pipeline running from North Central West Virginia to Chatham, Va. was initially slated to be completed and in operation by the end of 2018 and is more than 90 percent complete. Part of the unfinished portion crosses federal land across Peters Mountain from Monroe County, W.Va., into Giles County, Va.

However, progress has been primarily hampered by lawsuits based on federal permitting processes.

Capito said legislators from both parties have “conjoining interests” in working together to “find something that eases the ability to permit, at least a time frame, and you are not in court all the time with these non-ending lawsuits … You look at how we can get these projects done in a reasonable time.”

“I am actually encouraged here,” she said. “We are going to try to work this through the committee on the Environment and Public Works (EPW).”

That includes going through reviews of NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act), the Clean Water Act, time lines and judicial review.

Capito is Ranking Member of the EPW Committee.

“Then over on the Energy Committee, where Sen. (Joe) Manchin (D-W.Va.) sits, will be the transmission portions of this bill,” she said. “We are already in preliminary conversations with Republicans and Democrats on this. We are going to see what the House is passing … We will see what is in their permitting. We are going to have a hearing at the end of April.”

“We have never had a permitting hearing since I have been here,” she added. “I believe they are going to have one over on the Energy Committee.”

The House has passed H.R. 1, which includes federal permitting reform as well as an amendment to hasten the completion of the MVP.

Capito said recently the Senate will look at whatever the House passes, make changes that may make it more palatable for a bipartisan vote and then send it back to the House to concur.

Both Capito and Manchin have tried to get through permitting reform legislation before, especially pertaining to the MVP, but no traction was gained.

That scenario may change now, Capito said, always concluding it must be a bipartisan process.

“I think that the wheels are rolling here, but I think we have to have buy-ins from everybody and that is what we didn’t have before,” she said Thursday. “This needs to be an amended process that people are looking at. If we can achieve success, that is how we do it.”

In an op-ed published Friday in The Hill, Capito and Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., Ranking Member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee (ENR), addressed the issue and a path forward to get it done.

“Working with the House, the Senate now has the opportunity to consider meaningful legislation to fix our broken system. We can achieve bipartisan reform that rebuilds America’s crumbling infrastructure, creates good-paying jobs, lowers prices, and enhances our international competitiveness,” the senators said.

The longer a project takes to permit, they said, the more it costs.

“West Virginia’s Mountain Valley Pipeline, for example, was originally supposed to cost $3.5 billion and open in 2018. It would boost the economy and supply natural gas to 10 million American homes,” Capito and Barrasso said in the article. “Litigation and protests over permits issued and reissued by three administrations of both parties nearly doubled the cost to an astonishing $6.6 billion. It’s still not finished. The costlier a project becomes, the more likely developers will pull the plug. For project opponents, that’s their path to victory.”

The senators wrote that there is a better way.

“As Ranking Members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, we each will be introducing legislation that together will streamline the permitting process while maintaining environmental safeguards,” they said. “Project developers need a process that is predictable and delivers a final answer. To accomplish that, our proposals will adhere to four basic principles.”

Those principals include:

• Serious reform must benefit the entire country, not a narrow range of interests. Our proposal will be technology and fuel neutral.

• Bureaucratic dawdling can’t be allowed to kill projects. Our reforms will include enforceable timelines—with specific time limits on environmental reviews. If the responsible agency doesn’t meet the deadline, there must be real consequences that put the onus on the agency to modernize procedures.

• Legislation should put in place time limits on legal challenges. Requiring groups challenging environmental reviews to do so within 60 days after project approval will prevent endless litigation intended solely to kill projects.

• The executive branch must not be allowed to hijack the permitting process to meet unrelated policy goals. President Biden’s unrelenting assault on American energy and mineral production makes reform of our leasing procedures urgent.