Photo credit: Mason Cummings
The Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) is a 303-mile, 42-inch diameter fracked gas pipeline that, if completed, will stretch from northwestern West Virginia through southern Virginia. It will have three compressor stations along its route, all in West Virginia, and an attached 31-mile pipeline, MVP Southgate, that will expand the transport of fracked gas into North Carolina.
The MVP was proposed in 2014, but it has faced intense opposition from landowners, Indigenous communities, and climate advocates, who say the pipeline’s polluting impacts will be the equivalent of 23 new coal-fired power plants. Concerted legal challenges and direct action protests have stalled the pipeline’s construction, and its estimated costs have boomed from an initial $3.5 billion nearly a decade ago to $7.2 billion today.
The owners of the MVP received a major gift when President Joe Biden struck a deal with West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, a true fossil fuel loyalist, to quicken the approval of the MVP as part of the June 2023 debt agreement. As an interstate pipeline, the MVP will be regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) but will also need permits from other federal and state agencies.
Today, MVP owners claim the pipeline is 94% constructed and will be operational in the fall of 2024, though pipeline opponents say this is untrue, even according to the company’s own reports. MVP owners have increasingly coordinated with “fusion centers” and local police to increase repression of protesters in the forms of arrests, fines, lawsuits, and harsh new state laws.
Behind the MVP exists a wider power structure composed of CEOs, board directors, asset managers, and big banks who all stand to profit from the pipeline, and indeed already have. The names of consumer-facing financial firms like Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street are all propping up and profiting from the MVP even as they give lip service to issues like “sustainability” and “net-zero commitments.”
Even more, the main owner and operator of the MVP, Equitrans Midstream, is now being acquired by EQT Corporation, one of the top fracking corporations in the U.S. Executives from both Equitrans and EQT donated big to Joe Manchin as he extracted approval of the MVP. And some of the top regulators of the pipeline — including the chairman of FERC and the heads of crucial state environmental agencies — have alarming ties to the fossil fuel industry.
This post highlights six important things that organizers taking on the MVP should know.
The driving force behind the MVP over the past several years has been its top owner and sole operator, Equitrans Midstream. The MVP’s website lists Equitrans (the parent company of EQM Midstream Partners) as having a “45.5% significant ownership interest” in the MVP. Media reports have also put Equitrans’ stake at 48.1%.
After Equitrans, other parties to the MVP joint venture are NextEra Energy (31% ownership interest; Con Edison Transmission (12.5% interest); WGL Midstream (10% interest); and RGC Midstream (1% interest).
But in early March 2024, EQT Corp, the top fracking company in the Marcellus Shale region, announced that it was acquiring Equitrans in a $14 billion all-stock deal. Equitrans was previously part of EQT Corp but spun off in 2018 into an independent company. EQT Corp played a leading role in driving the fracking boom in the Marcellus Shale region, especially in Western Pennsylvania, where they’re headquartered, in the 2000s and 2010s. The company grew bigger in 2017 when it acquired Rice Energy, and current EQT Corp president and CEO Toby Z. Rice — who says the MVP will unleash an “AI power boom” — was a top executive with Rice Energy before the acquisition.
The significance of this merger (following its likely approval in the fall) for the MVP is that it will soon have a new owner: EQT Corp. In acquiring Equitrans, EQT Corp is joining a wave of massive fossil fuel mergers that are evermore consolidating the industry into the hands of a few big players.........