Eminent Domain – No Fricking Fracking

Virginia landowners urge FERC to require cancelled Atlantic Coast Pipeline to relinquish easements

Virginia Mercury: Virginia landowners urge FERC to require cancelled Atlantic Coast Pipeline to relinquish easements.

Several dozen landowners who granted easements to the developers of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline are asking federal regulators to require the pipeline to give up them up now that the project has been cancelled.

“I signed an easement agreement in October 2018 because I felt I had no choice,” wrote Judy Allen in comments filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission this April concerning two Bath County properties the pipeline was to traverse. “The current easement places an unwarranted burden on me and limits my ability to use the property as my sons and I desire.”

DeSmogBlog, November 25, 2020

Articles include: Pipelines – LNG Project and Eminent Domain; Report: Pandemic Lockdowns – Emissions, WMO; Court Ruling Force France To Justify Climate Targets; Oil Companies Can’t Find Buyers For Refineries; Climate Disinformation Database: The American Farm Bureau Federation

NC regulators deny environmental permit for fracked-gas Southgate pipeline

Appalachian V0ices discusses how NC regulators deny environmental permit for fracked-gas Southgate pipeline.

Today, the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality denied the permit application for Southgate extension of the Mountain Valley Pipeline. The agency said “that work on the Southgate extension could lead to unnecessary water quality impacts and disturbance of the environment in North Carolina.”

After questioning the need for the project to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the DEQ has denied a Clean Water Act permit that would have allowed Mountain Valley Pipeline, LLC to cross water bodies in North Carolina and to begin using eminent domain to take private land in both Virginia and North Carolina.

The Appalachian V0ices website is at https://appvoices.org/

A POWERFUL PETROCHEMICAL LOBBYING GROUP ADVANCED ANTI-PROTEST LEGISLATION IN THE MIDST OF THE PANDEMIC

The Intercept discusses how a petrochemical lobbying group advanced anti-protest legislation during the pandemic.

ONE DAY AFTER West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice’s shelter-in-place orders went into effect, the governor quietly signed into law the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act. In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, the law created new felony penalties for protest actions targeting oil and gas facilities, as the state continues to confront opposition to two massive natural gas pipelines designed to cut through delicate forests, streams, and farmland.

If construction is completed, the Mountain Valley and Atlantic Coast pipelines would transport gas extracted via fracking in West Virginia to markets in Virginia and North Carolina, passing through the crumbly limestone landscapes known as karst that underly much of the mountainous region. Such projects are key to keeping fracking companies operating at a time when gas prices are at historic lows and allowing a booming petrochemical industry to continue its expansion. Local landowners and residents concerned with environmental issues have attempted to stop construction by locking themselves to equipment and camping out in trees in the pipelines’ paths. Along with more conventional actions such as lawsuits, the protest efforts have cost the projects’ backers billions of dollars in delays.

FERC prohibits pipeline construction, allows land seizures as court weighs ‘legal purgatory’ of rehearing delays

Utility Dive discusses FERC prohibits pipeline construction while the court case goes on, but allows land seizures as court weighs ‘legal purgatory’ of rehearing delays.

Federal regulators, under scrutiny from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, issued an order Wednesday prohibiting natural gas pipeline developers from beginning construction on a project until regulators act on rehearing requests.
The order addresses in part issues raised during the court’s April en banc hearing in Allegheny Defense Project v. FERC. The case centers on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) practice of continuously delaying requests for rehearing under the Natural Gas Act. Petitioners argued in part that the commission has been delaying requests for rehearing indefinitely, while allowing construction on controversial pipeline projects to proceed.
FERC Commissioner Richard Glick dissented in part to the order. Though the order is “a step in the right direction,” it does not address the concern that pipeline developers can still begin to condemn private land before the landowner is able to challenge the developer’s ability to do so, he said.

Pipeline companies are still trying to take people’s land—even during a pandemic

Fast Company discusses how pipeline companies are still trying to take people’s land—even during a pandemic. Using eminent domain, pipeline firms have broad authority to build through private property. The coronavirus hasn’t slowed them down.

Pipeline giant Kinder Morgan is cutting a 400-mile line across the middle of Texas, digging up vast swaths of private land for its planned Permian Highway Pipeline. The project is ceaseless, continuing through the coronavirus pandemic. Landowner Heath Frantzen says that dozens of workers have shown up to his ranch in Fredericksburg, even as public health officials urged people to stay at home.

“There weren’t wearing masks. They weren’t wearing gloves. They weren’t practicing social distancing,” he says. Frantzen believes the workers pose a danger to him and his 85-year-old father, whom he cares for. While the laborers are confined to the pipeline’s path, he worries they could spread the coronavirus by touching fence railings or gates that he might later handle.

Seven-Mile Gas Pipeline Outside Albany Has Activists up in Arms

This Inside Climate News article discusses why a Seven-Mile Gas Pipeline Outside Albany Has Activists up in Arms. National Grid says the project is needed to meet rising demand, but opponents see it as a means of connecting two interstate pipelines and boosting their capacities.

Back in February 2019, National Grid, a natural gas and electric utility, applied for a permit to build a small 7.3-mile natural gas pipeline across several towns in New York’s Upper Hudson River Valley. It would make it easier to transfer gas in the Albany area between two large interstate pipelines.

Anticipating quick approval by state regulators, the utility—which also services New York City and Long Island—expected to begin construction by fall 2019.

Already into January 2020, however, the pipeline—dubbed the E37 Reliability and Resiliency Project—has yet to get approval, and could become the latest casualty in the escalating fight over the future of New York’s energy economy.

DeSmogBlog, January 10, 2020

This week’s articles include:

The Atlantic Coast Pipeline’s destructive path

This Grist article discusses the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which would divide mountains, farmland, and sacred Native American land along its 600-mile route, but it’s uniting a diverse community of activists determined to halt its progress.

The pink ribbons start in northern West Virginia. Tied to flimsy wooden posts stuck a few inches into the earth, they’re easy to miss as they whip in the crisp, fall wind. Heading south, they dot landscapes for 600 miles, marking the proposed route of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. They pass over cave systems and watersheds, climb up and down densely forested Appalachian slopes. They stamp quiet hollers and hillside family cemeteries. They divide historic African American communities and indigenous land.

The route stretches from the Marcellus Shale region of West Virginia, through Virginia, to southern North Carolina — though the energy companies behind the pipeline have floated the idea of extending it into South Carolina. If completed, the hundreds of miles of 42- and 36-inch diameter steel would carry 1.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas every day — enough to power 5 million homes daily. Three compressor stations along the route would help transport the gas, and, like much of the pipeline, would be built in lower-income, rural communities, bypassing more affluent property owners.

Opinion: Why natural gas is not the answer to climate change?

This Houston Chronicle opinion piece discusses why natural gas is not the answer to global warming. Don’t believe the hype — producing natural gas is producing enormous problems for Texas.

The huge amount of water required for gas extraction, the frequent and damaging wastewater spills and earthquakes linked to disposal, the family farms and ranches seized for pipelines, and the air pollution, fires and explosions at petrochemical plants all add up to significant damage to our air, water and land. And a growing amount of gas is going to produce plastics, much of which wind up clogging our oceans.