As Mountain Valley Pipeline LLC (MVP) seeks to conclude a protracted construction phase and enter service this month, the developer recently experienced a setback in Virginia when a section of pipe ruptured during hydrostatic testing.
The incident, which occurred last Wednesday on the MVP mainline in Roanoke County, VA, saw water escape through the rupture; sediment was discharged into a nearby stream and wetland, a Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) spokesperson told NGI.
“MVP has removed the sediment, and disturbed areas have been stabilized,” the DEQ spokesperson said. “DEQ is working to determine the extent of impacts, which will inform next steps. This unauthorized impact does not affect the status of existing DEQ approvals.”
MVP recently told FERC it expects to be ready to place the project into service by May 23.
The 303-mile, 2 million Dth/d MVP has often had to deal with heightened scrutiny of its activities, having for years been the subject of contentious debates and the target of relentless legal challenges.
It took an act of Congress last summer to get MVP construction back on track after years of delays amid numerous adverse legal decisions.
Last fall, MVP operator Equitrans Midstream Corp. entered into a consent agreement with the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) to address concerns raised by the regulator. Among those concerns, PHMSA identified potential issues resulting from pipe coating being exposed to the elements during the project’s construction delays.
After the incident during testing last week, MVP notified PHMSA and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, as well as the Virginia DEQ, spokesperson Natalie Cox told NGI.
“Importantly, the disruption of this one hydrotest does, in fact, demonstrate that the testing process is working as designed and intended,” Cox said.
The operator “will uphold its obligations and satisfy all requirements of the consent agreement that are necessary to commission the remaining segments and put them in-service,” Cox added.
MVP is a joint venture of Equitrans Midstream, NextEra Capital Holdings Inc., Con Edison Transmission Inc., WGL Midstream MVP LLC and RGC Midstream LLC. The project is designed to transport production from West Virginia to an interconnect with Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Co., aka Transco, in Pittsylvania County, VA.
U.S. natural gas production heavyweight EQT Corp. in March announced plans to recombine with Equitrans Midstream. Once in service, MVP is poised to play an integral part in EQT’s plans to meet growing demand in the Southeast.
“Due to the confluence of LNG facilities pulling gas South on Transco and power demand growth in the Southeast, we expect this region will become even more desirable than the Gulf Coast later this decade,” EQT CEO Toby Rice said during a recent earnings conference call.
