Supreme Court Rules Mountain Valley Pipeline Construction Can Continue

On July 27, the U.S. Supreme Court granted an emergency request from the company behind the $6.6 billion Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP). There were no dissents to the ruling, and construction on the pipeline will now be able to resume.

As Connecting the Dots has reported over the last couple of weeks, two days before construction on the Mountain Valley Pipeline was to resume after a nearly-year long delay, a panel of judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit halted construction on the important energy infrastructure project. The ruling came after Congress approved, and President Joe Biden signed, a bill this summer that mandated that construction on the project move forward. That legislation even had removed the Fourth Circuit’s jurisdiction over litigation surrounding the project.

After the Fourth Circuit Court’s ruling, the developer of the MVP immediately asked the Supreme Court to intervene in the matter and to vacate the lower court’s ruling.

The Biden administration supported that request. “The application to vacate the court of appeals’ stays should be granted,” wrote U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar to the Supreme Court, arguing the law’s “unambiguous text” states that no court, including the Fourth Circuit, should have jurisdiction to review approvals pertaining to the pipeline.