The U.S. Supreme Court this week upheld a controversial move engineered by U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) to open the door to the completion of the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), which will ship large quantities of natural gas from the Marcellus shale gas fields to Virginia.
A brief order issued Thursday and signed by Chief Justice John Roberts agreed that Manchin’s provision taking the MVP project out of the jurisdiction of the federal appeals court in Virginia and effectively ending long-running litigation over the project was indeed constitutional. “The application to vacate stays presented to the Chief Justice and by him referred to the Court is granted,” said the order, which did not expand on the legal reasoning behind the ruling or mention any dissents.
Manchin said Thursday the high court had agreed the ruling was in line with his provision on MVP, which the Biden administration agreed to in exchange for Manchin’s critical backing on legislation earlier this year to raise the federal government debt ceiling. “The Supreme Court has spoken and this decision to let construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline move forward again is the correct one,” wrote Manchin. “I am relieved that the highest court in the land has upheld the law Congress passed and the President signed.”
The ruling was also cheered by members of Pennsylvania’s congressional delegation as a positive development for the commonwealth’s natural gas industry.
“The legislation that I authored to fully authorize the completion of the Mountain Valley Pipeline was passed by a bipartisan majority in the House and Senate, and signed into law by the President of the United States,” noted U.S. Rep. John Joyce (R-PA). “The Court’s decision today is a significant step towards bringing the clean, affordable energy beneath the feet of my constituents to families and businesses across the southeastern U.S.”
U.S. Rep. Dan Meuser (R-PA) called the ruling a win for Pennsylvania. “The Mountain Valley Pipeline will have a multi-billion-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,” tweeted Meuser.
U.S. Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R-PA) also praised the ruling, tweeting: “@HouseGOP led the way for the completion of the Mountain Valley Pipeline — and I am pleased to see SCOTUS grant the emergency request.”
Manchin, Reschenthaler, Joyce, Meuser and a number of congressional allies were also signatories to amicus briefs filed in the case in which MVP opponents were seeking a stay of the legislation transferring jurisdiction in the MVP litigation from the 4th District Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va. to the appellate court in Washington, D.C. while also calling a unilateral halt to legal challenges to the pipeline.
Environmental groups battling the MVP project in court have called the debt-ceiling deal a blatant move to derail a legitimate challenge to the pipeline, but were largely quiet after Thursday’s ruling. The League of Conservation Voters issued a tweet warning that the $6 billion MVP project would “lock in decades of emissions and jeopardize communities in West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina.”
The operators of the MVP, Canonsburg, Pa.-based Equitrans Midstream Corp., had no immediate comment, but the project’s supporters had urged a quick decision from the high court so the final section of the pipeline can be completed before winter. The 303-mile pipeline, designed to carry 2 billion cubic feet of gas per day, is already nearly completed; the litigation before the 4th Circuit had halted construction of the final 3.5-mile segment running though the Jefferson National Forest in Virginia.