SCOTUS salvages Joe Manchin’s Mountain Valley Pipeline after lower court block

The Supreme Court gave the green light Thursday to restart construction of a natural gas pipeline long championed by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) after a lower court blocked the project from moving forward earlier this month.

In a brief stay imposed by the the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals on construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) through a 3.5-mile stretch of the Jefferson National Forest.

Congress fast-tracked completion of the roughly 300-mile pipeline by mass approving permits and stripping the Fourth Circuit from jurisdiction over the matter in the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023, the debt limit compromise deal enacted in June.

Despite a congressional mandate nixing its jurisdiction, the Fourth Circuit placed a stay on construction, siding with environmentalist plaintiffs including the Wilderness Society and Appalachian Voices.

The appeals court imposed the stay while it reviewed the challenge to the pipeline’s construction.

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The Biden administration filed a brief with the high court requesting it vacate the appeals court order.

“Whatever benefit respondents or the court of appeals might believe would be gained by having the agencies again reconsider the challenged actions, Congress has determined that further reconsideration is unwarranted and has prioritized MVP’s ‘timely’ completion over interests addressed by any other federal statutes,” the Department of Justice wrote in an amicus brief last week. 

Since construction began in 2018, the $6.6 billion project, which is a joint venture by firms including Equitrans Midstream, NextEra Energy, and others, has been ensnared in litigation.

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Manchin, a onetime linchpin vote for Senate Democrats, had championed the pipeline’s construction and assailed the array of roadblocks it encountered.

“The Supreme Court has spoken and this decision to let construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline move forward again is the correct one.”

I am relieved that the highest court in the land has upheld the law Congress passed and the President signed,” he tweeted Thursday.

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The pipeline is meant to carry fuel from northwestern West Virginia to southern Virginia.

There were no dissents noted in the Supreme Court’s miscellaneous order.