New York-based utility giant Consolidated Edison (ConEd) is capping its investment in the troubled Mountain Valley natural gas pipeline.
ConEd revealed in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing Monday (reviewed by Kallanish Energy) its CET Gas unit will cap its investment in MVP at $530 million.
ConEd already has spent $488 million on the 300-mile line. The MVP will be constructed and owned by Mountain Valley Pipeline LLC, a joint venture between EQM Midstream Partners, NextEra US Gas Assets, Con Edison Transmission, WGL Midstream, and RGC Midstream. EQM Midstream will operate the line.
Mountain Valley will flow up to 2 billion cubic feet per day of Marcellus and Utica Shale play gas from West Virginia to markets in the Mid- and South Atlantic regions of the U.S.
The pipeline has been mired for years in legal cases on the state and federal level.
“In October 2019, the operator of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, which is being constructed by a joint venture in which CET Gas has a 12.5% ownership interest, indicated that it now expects a late 2020 full in-service date for the project, at an overall project cost of $5.30 billion to $5.50 billion, excluding allowance for funds used during construction,” according to the ConEd SEC filing.
Limiting its MVP investment, CET Gas said its ownership interest in the joint venture would be reduced to approximately 10%.
EQM said in its earnings report Tuesday it would put $86 million toward the MVP’s construction, for a total of $2.7 billion. It has already spent $1.7 billion. EQM will see its ownership stake go from 45.5% to 47%, according to the news release.
Mountain Valley Pipeline has had to deal with numerous challenges since being announced in 2014. Not only were there changes to the route before construction started, but heavy rains caused problems, as have legal challenges by residents, environmental groups, and regulators in Virginia, West Virginia and the federal government.
Line construction is roughly 90% complete.
