Supreme Court Approves 303-Mile Mountain Valley Natural Gas Pipeline

In what is clearly a victory for common sense, the Supreme Court allowed construction of a 303-mile-long natural gas pipeline to resume.

The Gateway Pundit reports that the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), which runs between Virginia and West Virginia, was 95% complete when the 4^th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered construction to stop on July 11^th.  The appeals court was responding to a request from two environmental activist groups, Appalachian Voices and The Wilderness Society, that the approvals to build the pipeline were defective.

The Wilderness Society stated on its website that it and the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) “[alleged] violations of multiple environmental laws in connection with defective approvals by the United States Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management allowing the MVP to cross the Jefferson National Forest in Virginia and West Virginia.”  The MVP pipeline runs through Jefferson National Forest. 

Equitrans Midstream, which is developing the pipeline, had filed an emergency intervention request with Chief Justice John Roberts to block the 4^th Circuit Court’s order, which many in the energy industry saw as an overreach by the appeals court.

West Virginia’s congressmen were pleased with Roberts’ decision.  Republican Senator Shelley Moore Capito said, “All necessary permits have been issued and approved, we passed bipartisan legislation in Congress, the president signed that legislation into law, and 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.”  West Virginia is slated to received tens of millions of dollars into its economy from the pipeline.

But Roberts’ overruling of the 4^th Circuit Court of Appeals is seen as a win not just for West Virginia, but also for other energy-producing states.  Montana Republican Representative Matt Rosendale said of the victory, “Today, the Supreme Court ended a campaign by activist judges to block good energy laws passed by Congress and signed by the President. This is a huge victory for American energy independence.”

Environmental activists have long been an arm of the Democratic Party’s efforts to reduce the fossil fuel industry’s contribution to maintaining America’s strength and prosperity.  By opposing all attempts at constructing new oil refineries, pipelines, and fossil-fuel-powered electricity generation plants – as well as pushing unproven theories of globe-destroying carbon emissions – Democrats hope to further impoverish America closer to becoming a great welfare state wherein only the Democrats themselves may choose which Americans get what resources to live. It is for this reason that the Democratic Party wishes to eliminate fossil fuels in favor of highly inefficient and environmentally destructive electricity generation methods such solar panels and windmills, a fundamental change that will serve to place all 20^th and 21^st Century technologies dependent on power into their own hands.