Federal energy regulators gave the all-clear Tuesday for the Mountain Valley pipeline to start operations, the final approval needed for the embattled project to begin moving natural gas.
The decision from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission came one day after the joint venture behind the project told the agency the pipeline was “mechanically complete.”
The authorization for Mountain Valley to commence service also arrived more than 6 ½ years after FERC approved the project, allowing construction to begin. And it follows numerous legal challenges that were stymied after a provision in a federal debt ceiling law last year expedited the project’s completion. The pipeline will travel 303 miles from West Virginia to southern Virginia and is designed to transport up to 2 billion cubic feet of natural gas daily.
FERC’s one-page order, signed by Terry Turpin, the director of the commission’s Office of Energy Projects, was posted to the commission’s online docket Tuesday. That’s the same day that Turpin spoke on the phone with Alan Mayberry, associate administrator for pipeline safety at the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), the federal agency that oversees nearly 3.3 million miles of pipeline across the United States.
