U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and Chief Deputy Whip Guy Reschenthaler (R-PA) led filings of amicus briefs with the U.S. Supreme Court this week in support of the Mountain Valley Pipeline’s (MVP) completion.
Manchin signed an amicus “friend of the court” brief stating that legislation passed by Congress earlier this year effectively brings an end to the litigation that has held up the completion of the MVP project, which began in 2015.
Once completed, the MVP will carry large amounts of natural gas from gas fields in West Virginia to interstate pipeline connections in Virginia that serve the Atlantic Coast region. If completed, the pipeline will help reduce energy costs for Americans in South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia. It will also stimulate the economies of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia with thousands of construction jobs, millions in royalties to landowners – including $150 million per year for Pennsylvania – and direct investments into rural communities, lawmakers said.
“It is a shame when members of Congress have to ask the Supreme Court to intervene to maintain the credibility of the laws that we have passed and the President has signed, but I am confident that the Court will uphold our laws and allow construction of MVP to resume,” Manchin said in a written statement.
Manchin appeared to have pulled off a brazen bare-knuckle political bargain with the Biden administration earlier this year by swapping his key support for the high-profile Fiscal Responsibly Act of 2023, which allowed the nation’s debt ceiling to be raised. Section 324 of the legislation declared that the MVP project was of vital interest to the nation, and that litigation from environmentalists must come to a halt. Manchin and other MVP backers point out that the 303-mile project has passed the required governmental reviews and, in fact, has already been completed aside from a contested 3.5-mile section through Virginia’s Jefferson National Forest.
That work, however, was put on hold until further notice by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Virginia, which on July 11 granted a stay on further construction sought by the Wilderness Society despite section 324.
Manchin’s brief argued that section 324 had taken the MVP case away from the Fourth Circuit and assigned future litigation to the appeals court in Washington, D.C., effectively sending the Virginia court to the sidelines and making any of its subsequent rulings invalid. “Enactment of section 324 moots the cases pending in the Fourth Circuit and deprives it of jurisdiction to grant the stays the Applicant is asking this Court to vacate,” said the brief. “Section 324 is a valid Act of Congress and should be given legal effect.”
The Wilderness Society noted the MVP litigation had been going on for several years. “The Fourth Circuit has simply maintained the status quo while this ongoing, important legal challenge to the destructive pipeline is heard in court,” said Jamie Williams, president of the environmental organization. “The order halting construction is lawful, and it should alarm every American when Congress ignores the vital role of an independent court system.”
Manchin’s brief did not deny the seemingly heavy-handed nature of section 324, but it argued the section was clearly legal under existing legislation, including the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, the Natural Gas Act, and a slew of legal cases. The cases cited included the 1980 ruling that finally cleared away legal roadblocks to the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, allowing completion of the crude pipeline at a time when the United States was grappling with tight oil supplies and surging gasoline prices.
“Indeed, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act served as the principal model for section 324,” Manchin’s brief said. “That Act, like section 324, was enacted ‘to limit litigation that would further delay construction of the pipeline.’”
Meanwhile, Rep. Reschenthaler filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in support of the MVP along with nine of his Republican colleagues, including Reps. John Joyce (R-PA), Mike Kelly (R-PA) and Dan Meuser (R-PA), among others.
“The Fourth Circuit judges are not supreme rulers and lawful orders issued by the legislative and executive branches must be followed,” Reschenthaler said in a statement. “Congress was well within its power to restart the Mountain Valley Pipeline construction and usher in a new era of energy independence for the region. Instead of halting the pipeline, I urge the Supreme Court to plug up the ludicrous activism seeping out of the lower court so American families can enjoy lower energy costs, substantial land royalties, and most importantly – law and order in America.”
The MVP would have a multibillion-dollar economic impact on Pennsylvania and is vital to the growth of the commonwealth’s natural gas industry, which employs tens of thousands of residents, Rep. Meuser said. “Continued delays in its construction not only harms economic opportunity for natural gas producers in my District, but it threatens energy security in several states across our region. That is why I joined my colleague, Guy Reschenthaler, in filing this Amicus Brief in support of an Emergency Application to vacate the stays of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.”
Rep. Kelly noted the MVP is more than 90 percent complete. “Soaring energy costs have driven prices up and devalued the hard-earned dollar. The Mountain Valley Pipeline will allow for more natural gas to flow through the United States, ultimately lowering energy costs for families and businesses,” Kelly said.
Equitrans Midstream Corporation, the operators of Mountain Valley Pipeline, LLC, said last week it was confident that the timeline for the final permits required to complete construction could be wrapped up relatively soon. “The path to an MVP completion during 2023 is narrower but based on the diligent and comprehensive work being done by the staff at various state and federal agencies and the expected overall permitting timeline, we believe the possibility of commencing forward construction this summer still exists,” Chairman and CEO Thomas F. Karam told investment analysts during the company’s quarterly earnings call last week.