The U.S. Supreme Court cleared a path for completion of the Mountain Valley Pipeline by issuing an order that lifted an appeals court stay.
The Supreme Court was acting on an emergency intervention request by the pipeline developers, who said the project could not be completed by winter without the go-ahead.
Developers have said Mountain Valley Pipeline is more than 90 percent complete, but construction experienced repeated delays through environmental challenges in court. The developers have stated a goal of completing the pipeline by the end of this year.
Today, the pipeline developers praised chief justice.
“We are grateful for the quick action of the United States Supreme Court in vacating the previously issued stay orders regarding the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project,” stated Natalie Cox, communications director for project developer Equitrans Midstream Corp.
“In accordance with the project’s strict safety standards and environmental requirements of the issued permits, we look forward to completing this important infrastructure project.”
Last month, Congressed passed a rider in a broader debt bill to mandate approval of remaining permits and to curtail judicial review. The pipeline developers then sought dismissal of environmental challenges already in the court system, and appeals judges with the Fourth Circuit ordered a stay of construction to buy time to consider the issues.
The Supreme Court order lifted the stay without much additional elaboration. Chief Justice John Roberts was assigned the emergency intervention request because he has oversight of the Fourth Circuit, and then Roberts referred the case to the rest of the court.
Lawyers for Mountain Valley Pipeline, in written arguments direct to the Supreme Court, argued that “every day that the stays are in place frustrates Congress’s unambiguous direction as to what the public interest requires.”
The chief justice’s order received instant praise from West Virginia political figures, including senators Shelley Moore Capito and Joe Manchin.
“The Supreme Court has spoken and this decision to let construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline move forward again is the correct one,” stated Manchin, D-W.Va.
Capito, R-W.Va., stated that “now the Supreme Court has spoken: construction on the Mountain Valley Pipeline can finally resume, which is a major win for American energy and American jobs.”
The chief justice’s order was distributed even as oral arguments about the case were underway before a panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va.
The appeals judges in the case are Roger Gregory, James Wynn and Stephanie Thacker, a West Virginian.
The appeals judges briefly verbally acknowledged the chief justice’s intervention on the stay issue, but oral arguments continued on related aspects such as whether to dismiss environmental challenges and whether the Fourth circuit still has jurisdiction.
The judges on the appeals panel, over more than an hour, asked a range of questions about the consequences of the congressional action.
The pipeline section passed by Congress specified that “no court shall have jurisdiction to review any action taken by “an administrative agency “necessary for the construction and initial operation at full capacity of the Mountain Valley Pipeline . . . whether issued prior to, on, or subsequent to the date of enactment of this section, and including any lawsuit pending in a court as of the date of enactment of this section.”
Much of the appeals court discussion focused on whether Congress had taken a shortcut or if it had made substantive changes to underlying law — and, if so, how.
“It seems to me what is necessary in looking at Supreme Court law is, rather than just Congress picking a winner here, there must have been a new legal standard amended or set by this act. What is that?” asked Thacker.
Thacker later asked questions about how long the pipeline’s judicial scrutiny might be limited. Some of her focus was on who would determine whether the pipeline is finally at full capacity, as specified in the congressional language.
“Once the pipeline is at full capacity, if there are violations after that — that somebody brings a claim on — is there judicial review, and where?” Thacker asked.
At the conclusion of the hearing on the current challenges,, Mountain Valley Pipeline’s attorneys repeated the request to dismiss the cases.
Acknowledging the many years and instances that pipeline issues have been before the appeals court, Wynn commented, “We’ve been living with this case a long time. All of us.”