Atlantic Coast pipeline water permit stayed

Construction on Dominion Energy's Atlantic Coast natural gas pipeline has been halted in two West Virginia counties following a federal court's decision to stay a water permit.

The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals on 7 November granted a motion for a stay of the water quality permit in West Virginia's Pocahontas and Randolph counties. Multiple environmental groups, including the Sierra Club and the West Virginia Rivers Coalition, seek to pull the water permit alleging the construction process would prevent fish migration.

The court action represents another setback for the 1.4 Bcf/d (40mn m³/d) expansion, which has been challenged multiple times by environmental groups in the courts, leading to work stoppages.

The same federal court in September halted logging and further construction on 20 miles (32km) of the project's route that cuts across national forests in West Virginia and Virginia. That ruling followed a separate month-long stoppage related to other permits environmentalists had challenged in court.

Dominion earlier this month delayed the full in-service date of the 600-mile line to mid-2020 from its original end-2019 date, citing regulatory setbacks and construction delays.

Dominion also raised estimated costs for the project from $5bn to as high as $7bn as a result of the work stoppages. Atlantic Coast pipeline, which would transport shale gas from West Virginia into Virginia and North Carolina, is the most expensive ongoing large-scale expansion in the region.