MVP Resurrects Controversial Southgate Pipeline  

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA – Today, Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) submitted an application to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to resurrect its nearly defunct MVP Southgate pipeline project. This latest proposal is another attempt to commit the South to methane gas, a dangerous fossil fuel that worsens air pollution and accelerates climate change. The Southgate project is part of the unprecedented expansion of gas infrastructure underway across the South where, in just the last several years, industry has proposed enough new pipeline capacity to fuel dozens of new power plants. 

MVP Southgate would extend the controversial Mountain Valley Pipeline into North Carolina to deliver more climate-damaging methane gas to Duke Energy. Proposed in 2018, the Southgate project faced strong public opposition and multiple obstacles, including rejection of a required air permit for the project’s compressor station in Pittsylvania County, Virginia — a community already saddled with compressor station pollution and multiple pipelines. It has never moved forward but now attempts a comeback. 

“There is no sensible scenario where all this gas, including MVP Southgate, is truly needed by Southern communities,” said Megan Gibson, Senior Attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center. Instead, these proposals are driven by corporate profits, including a near guaranteed 14 percent return on equity for FERC-approved projects like MVP Southgate, and tech giants seeking a cheap, fast way to connect to the grid with gas power. This ultimately will hurt consumers and businesses within our region.”   

Southern utilities are aggressively expanding their fleet of gas-fired power plants to meet escalating power demand from data centers. New proposals for methane gas pipelines have popped up across the South in order to help tech companies quicky access the grid using cheap gas power which will come at great cost the environment, public health, and electricity bills for ratepayers. 

“MVP is once again pushing a methane pipeline at the expense of Southern communities and the climate—this time heeding the siren call from the tech industry,” said Greg Buppert senior attorney and leader of the Southern Environmental Law Center’s regional gas team. “Tech companies, many of which have pledged to fight climate change, have the leverage and the responsibility to insist on clean, reliable, and affordable energy for data centers instead of driving the South into decades of fossil fuel power. They must get off the sidelines and demand a stop to the harm their industry is unleashing in our region.”