Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) on Friday celebrated the resumption of construction on the Mountain Valley Pipeline, one day after the Supreme Court vacated judicial stays that prevented developers from completing the project.
The high court wrote in a Thursday order that the two stays issued by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this month violated the text of the debt ceiling bill signed by President Joe Biden in June, which included language protecting the project from further legal challenges. Manchin used his influence as a key swing vote in the Senate to ensure the protections were included in the must-pass legislation to avert a debt default, despite staunch opposition from Sen. Tim Kaine (D), who represents neighboring Virginia.
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“I fought to ensure that language to complete the Mountain Valley Pipeline was included in the Fiscal Responsibility Act in June,” Manchin said in a Friday statement. “Congress passed that law, the President signed it, and now the Supreme Court of the United States spoke with one voice to uphold it.”
“Construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline will now resume, creating 4,500 jobs by the end of August,” the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee chairman continued. “This is a great day for American energy security and even a greater day for the state of West Virginia.”
The West Virginia senator has long championed the natural gas project, which stretches for over 300 miles between northwest West Virginia and southern Virginia to move gas. Once fully operational, the pipeline is expected to have a capacity of 2 billion cubic feet per day. Over 94% of the project has been completed already, but it has been bogged down in litigation and permitting setbacks.
The debt ceiling legislation directed the United States Army Corps of Engineers to authorize the completion of the pipeline. Once signed into law, the act moved jurisdiction of the pipeline out of the Fourth Circuit, a court that has repeatedly opposed the MVP, though the court was able to grant a temporary construction stay in response to a motion from the Southern Environmental Law Center challenging the Manchin provision.
The issue then made its way to the Supreme Court, which sided with the developers of the pipeline on Thursday. Manchin filed an amicus curiae brief with the high court on behalf of developers in the matter.
Kaine said in May that while he was “neither a proponent nor an opponent of the MVP,” he believed “there should be an administrative process.”
“I objected to the provision in the debt ceiling deal that exempted the Mountain Valley Pipeline uniquely among any other infrastructure project in the country, that exempted it from normal permitting processes and also stripped jurisdiction away from the Fourth Circuit,” he added.
Manchin was not the only senator on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee who supported the MVP being included in the debt ceiling deal. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) told the Washington Examiner in early June that “this pipeline has been worked through multiple decades and multiple iterations of processes. Yes, I think it belongs in this bill.”
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“You know, this is a negotiated agreement; I wasn’t part of those negotiations,” she added. “But when we’re looking to matters that would increase our country’s security — it’s not just national security, it’s also economic security and energy security — I think the Mountain Valley Pipeline is one of these projects that contributes to that.”
Breanne Deppisch contributed to this report.
