U.S. Supreme Court greenlights Mountain Valley Pipeline

The Mountain Valley Pipeline has gone all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and won, at least for now. Thursday the court overturned a lower appeals court and said work on it can resume, "potentially moving the project closer to completion as a legal fight continues," The Wall Street Journal's David Harrison reports.

U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., won "a provision in the bipartisan debt-ceiling bill signed into law last month [that] stripped the lower court of its jurisdiction over the natural-gas pipeline and mandated that it be completed," Harrison notes. "The environmental groups behind the suits argued that stopping legal challenges before the Fourth Circuit violated the separation of powers clause of the Constitution, in effect giving Congress the power to decide the outcome of judicial proceedings. The Fourth Circuit agreed to pause the project while it sorted out the effect of the debt-ceiling law, prompting [pipeline owner] Equitrans Midstream to appeal to the Supreme Court. As is typical in emergency orders, the Supreme Court didn’t explain its ruling. There were no noted dissents. The court’s ruling didn’t dismiss the legal challenges to the pipeline entirely, allowing project opponents to continue making their case before the Fourth Circuit," which had a hearing scheduled Thursday.

The pipeline "has aroused controversy ever since it first was proposed almost a decade ago. Opponents, including adjacent landowners and environmental groups, have challenged the project’s environmental permits, delaying the project for years," Harrison notes. "Last year, the Biden administration struck a deal with Manchin: He would agree to provide the pivotal vote for the administration’s climate bill, and in exchange the White House and Senate Democratic leaders would support Manchin’s efforts to get the pipeline finished."