Even an “Act of Congress” may not be enough to keep the Mountain Valley Pipeline out of trouble. The long-stalled natural gas takeaway project in Appalachia briefly appeared to be unfettered from regulatory and legal shackles after Congress rolled an MVP mandate into the debt-ceiling bill — the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA) of 2023. With the MVP provision, Congress effectively approved all required permits for the greenfield project without judicial review in a bid to fast-track the completion and initial startup of the pipeline. The FRA, which President Biden signed into law on June 3, appeared to instantly clear MVP’s path. But that reprieve didn’t last long. Earlier this week, the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals once again halted construction of the project, seemingly in defiance of the FRA, setting the stage for a fight at the Supreme Court. In today’s RBN blog, we break down the latest developments and how they impact MVP’s prospects.
The RBN NATGAS Haynesville is a weekly natural gas fundamentals analysis focused on supply, flow, and LNG-driven demand dynamics within the Haynesville basin.
Before we dive into what’s happened this week, let’s get a quick refresher about what the MVP project is all about. The pipeline is designed to connect Appalachian gas supply to growing power generation markets in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast, including southern Virginia and, via the MVP Southgate extension, North Carolina. The MVP mainline (dashed pink line in Figure 1) is a ~300-mile, 42-inch-diameter pipe with an initial capacity of 2 Bcf/d, which the sponsor has said can be expanded by an incremental 500 MMcf/d through additional compression.
MVP Southgate (dashed purple line in Figure 1) was initially proposed as a 75-mile extension from the tailgate of the MVP mainline near Chatham, VA, to an end point in Alamance County, NC, about 50 miles south of the Virginia-North Carolina border. Given the permitting issues, MVP’s lead sponsor and prospective operator, Equitrans Midstream Partners LP (EQM), had said it was reevaluating the extension, and since the FRA’s enactment, it has asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for more time — until June 2026 — to complete it. (That filing has spurred strong opposition of its own. See our weekly NATGAS Appalachia report for the latest on MVP and other pipelines in the area.)
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About the song
“Fight Song” was written by Rachel Platten and Dave Bassett. It appears as the first song on Rachel Platten’s first EP for Columbia Records of the same name, released in May 2015. It also appeared as the fifth song on Platten’s third studio album and first major-label release, Wildfire. Released as a single in February 2015, it went to #6 on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles chart and has been certified 5x Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The song has been featured in several television shows and Ford car commercials. It was named the official theme song for the 2015 “Rise Above Cancer” campaign. Personnel on the record were: Rachel Platten (vocals, piano) and Jon Levine (programming, bass, keyboards and guitar).
Wildfire was recorded in 2015 and produced by Jon Levine, Brian West and Ben Singer. Released in January 2016, the album went to #5 on the Billboard 200 Albums chart and has been certified Gold by the RIAA. Three singles were released from the LP.
Rachel Platten is an American singer-songwriter. After releasing two independent albums in 2003 and 2011, she signed with Columbia Records in 2015. Her debut single, “Fight Song,” made the Top 10 in several countries worldwide and won her a Daytime Emmy Award for a live performance of the song on Good Morning America. In June 2015, Platten performed “Fight Song” with her friend Taylor Swift in front of an audience of 50,000 people in Philadelphia during Swift’s 1989 World Tour supporting Swift’s' fifth studio LP, 1989. Platten has released four studio albums, one EP and six singles. She has appeared in several television shows and is the author of a children's book. She continues to record and tour.
