Supreme Court clears way for gas expansion to East Coast - Houston Chronicle

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WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that a controversial pipeline could be built underneath the Appalachian Trail, giving the oil and gas sector relief from what some have described as a “green wall” to natural gas expansion along the East Coast.

With Democratic governors such as New York’s Andrew Cuomo questioning the need for more pipelines when the planet is warming because of greenhouse gas emissions, the ruling was heralded by oil and gas companies as a rejection of environmentalists’ years-long campaign to block natural gas pipelines.

“Now more than ever, it’s time for anti-energy groups to stop playing political games,” said David Holt, president of the Consumer Energy Alliance, a trade group representing energy producers and large consumers.

Environmentalists, he said, are “using contorted legal theories that stretch credulity and good sense with the sole mission of stopping the development of energy infrastructure.”

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The 7-2 ruling overturned a lower court decision that the U.S. Forest Service had incorrectly permitted the $7.5 billion Atlantic Coast Pipeline to cross underneath the 2,200-mile Appalachian Trail, which runs from Georgia to Maine. The pipeline is to be constructed 600 feet below the trail in rural Virginia.

The question of the permit was one of the last remaining regulatory issues facing the project, which will run 600 miles from West Virginia to North Carolina and can transport up 1.5 billion cubic feet of gas per day.

Among the companies drilling in the gas fields of West Virginia and nearby Pennsylvania are Houston’s Cabot Oil & Gas, EOG Resources and Southwestern Energy.

The decision was narrow, concerning the interplay of decision-making between the Forest Service and the National Park Service, which has authority over the trail. Still before the courts is the larger question of states’ authority to block pipelines, as Cuomo has done repeatedly through his veto power under the Clean Water Act.

“Benefits will primarily be confined to projects that need right of way easements to cross the subsurface of lands where the U.S. Forest Service has granted a trail easement to the National Park Service,” said Joel Johnston, an energy attorney in Denver.

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