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Pipeline Fights

CANCELLED

Atlantic Coast Gas Pipeline

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In July 2020, project backers Dominion and Duke announced that they were cancelling the pipeline due to the prospect of continued delays and opposition from a coalition of environmentalists and property rights activists. The pipeline was proposed to start in West Virginia, drawing gas from wells in the Utica and Marcellus gas fields, and travel southeast through eastern Virginia into North Carolina. Developers had also sought to build a compressor station for the pipeline in Union Hill, a historic African-American community settled by Freedmen and Freedwomen in the years after the Civil War. Despite cancellation of the project, Atlantic Coast Pipeline has so far refused to return easements to affected landowners on the now-abandoned pipeline's route. 

CANCELLED

Byhalia Connection Oil Pipeline

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The proposed 45-mile Byhalia Pipeline, a joint venture of Valero and Plains All American, would cross through historically Black neighborhoods and landowner communities in the city of Memphis, TN (e.g. Boxtown) and into Mississippi — with Black landowners currently engaged in challenges to eminent domain condemnation of their land in the local courts.

PROPOSED

Coastal GasLink Gas Pipeline

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The pipeline project, owned by TransCanada / TC Energy, the province of Alberta, and KKR & Co., has garnered international attention due to protests by the Unist’ot’en (Dark House) of the Wet’suwet’en and their supporters, who say the pipeline crosses 120 miles of unceded First Nations lands.

OPERATING

Dakota Access Oil Pipeline

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Despite a mass uprising and months-long occupation on Lakota lands on and near the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation in North Dakota, a movement started to protect Indigenous sacred sites and water sources that spawned solidarity actions across the U.S. and the world, Energy Transfer Partners’ controversial Dakota Access (DAPL) Pipeline was completed in 2017. The line currently carries light sweet crude oil from the Bakken/Three Forks production area in Stanley, North Dakota across South Dakota and Iowa to Patoka, Illinois. A proposed expansion would increase capacity from 570,000 to 1.1 million barrels per day.

OPERATING

Enbridge Line 3 Oil Pipeline Replacement

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Like its infamous cousin Keystone XL, the proposed Enbridge Line 3 replacement project is a major tar sands pipeline that would catalyze more production of the dirtiest and highest carbon form of oil – the Athabasca tar sands. Since construction on the line began in late 2020, resistance along the route has led to arrests and actions on a weekly basis, led by Indigenous Water Protectors of the Anishinaabe nations in northern Minnesota.

OPERATING

Enbridge Line 5 Oil Pipeline

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Constructed in 1953, recent investigations of Enbridge's Line 5 uncovered damage in the form of anchor strikes, missing supports, and lost protective coating that have increased concerns about corrosion and potential leaks on underwater segments of the twinned pipeline in the fragile Straits of Mackinac connecting Lake Michigan to Lake Huron. While former Republican Gov. Rick Snyder reached a deal in 2018 with Enbridge to build a tunnel to support this segment of the pipe, his successor Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) in 2020 revoked the pipeilne's easement and ordered Enbridge to cease operations of Line 5 by May 2021. Enbridge has so far said it would not comply with the order from the Governor of Michigan.

CANCELLED

Jordan Cove LNG Terminal + Pacific Connector Gas Pipeline

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This 16-year campaign against a proposed fracked gas pipeline (Pacific Connector) and LNG export terminal (Jordan Cove) is not over, but the opponents are in a far better position than the proponent, Canada-based Pembina Energy. The proposal is for a 229-mile pipeline affecting traditional Klamath territories and culturally significant areas, some 600 landowners, and crossing 485 rivers, streams and wetlands on its way to Coos Bay in Southern Oregon where an LNG export terminal would be built. Lands that would be impacted by the Pacific Connector Pipeline include national forests and land under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management. The clearcut swath would take out many old-growth trees and eliminate or fragment wildlife habitat. The pipeline would also cut across the Pacific Crest Trail, the popular National Scenic Hiking Trail that runs from Mexico to Canada.

CANCELLED

Keystone XL Pipeline

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On his first day in office on Jan. 20, 2021, President Joe Biden kept his campaign promise and rescinded Keystone XL’s Presidential Permit, effectively killing the project. Despite now lacking this fundamental permit, TransCanada / TC Energy has so far refused to relinquish easements to landowners that it acquired for the pipeline either voluntarily or through the courts via eminent domain condemnation -- and has even initiated new eminent domain condemnation lawsuits against Nebraska landowners months after President Biden revoked the company's permit.

CANCELLED

Navigator Heartland Greenway CO2

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Navigator CO2 Ventures is a privately-held company based in Dallas, backed by whose first-ever project is the proposed "Heartland Greenway" CO2 pipeline, a "carbon capture & storage" (CCS) project that would tap CO2 waste emissions from some 20 purported sources including Midwest ethanol plants, to be delivered via highly-pressurized pipeline 1,300 miles across Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska and South Dakota to a proposed underground sequestration site located in rock formations in south-central Illinois.

PROPOSED

Summit Midwest Carbon Express CO2

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Summit Carbon Solutions is a privately-held, newly-formed company based in Iowa proposing to build a $4.5 billion, 2,100-mile pipeline system and carbon capture and storage (CCS) project, which would tap CO2 emissions from Midwest ethanol plants and transport them via pipeline across five states to an underground sequestration site in North Dakota. 

PROPOSED

Tallgrass Energy Trailbazer Gas-to-CO2

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Privately-owned, Kansas-based Tallgrass Energy is proposing a conversion to carrying CO2 for its existing 450-mile "Trailblazer" gas pipeline, which runs from Cheyenne, WY to Beatrice, NE, where it currently connects with larger interstate gas pipelines that serve markets in the Midwest and Northeast.

PROPOSED

Mariner East 2 NGL Pipeline

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Mariner East 2 NGL Pipeline is an natural gas liquids (NGL) pipeline in Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Pennsylvania, United States. According to June 2020 data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), the pipeline carries propane, butane, and natural gasoline.

PROPOSED

Mountain Valley Gas Pipeline

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The Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) is a proposed fracked gas pipeline that would run 300 miles from Mobley, West Virginia, to Chatham, Virginia, with a 75-mile “MVP Southgate Extension” further into North Carolina also currently seeking permits. While the pipeline is currently more than 50% completed, the project’s permits still face ongoing legal challenges from landowners and environmental groups that have successfully halted construction in some areas on several occasions, as well as grassroots resistance. MVP is in a similar situation for other pipelines like DAPL, KXL, Line 3 and Pacific Connector — in the sense that all of these pipelines would fail a climate test if the Biden Administration put a policy in place across federal agencies.

CANCELLED

PennEast Gas Pipeline

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The proposed PennEast Pipeline would have moved natural gas 115 miles from the Marcellus Shale region in Pennsylvania to New Jersey. Despite a precedent-setting U.S. Supreme Court ruling in July 2021 granting the project authority to condemn state-owned land via eminent domain for the project, on Sept. 27, 2021, PennEast announced a cancellation of the pipeline project, citing a lack of outstanding state and federal permits.

OPERATING

Trans Mountain Expansion Oil Pipeline

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In 2013, then-owner Kinder Morgan filed an application with Canada’s National Energy Board to (twin) build a second pipeline — the $6.8 billion (now $9.9) billion Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion Project, which would require 609 miles of new pipeline construction and 12 additional pumping stations, nearly tripling the line’s tarsands carrying capacity from 300,000 to 890,000 bpd from Edmonton, Alberta to Burnaby, B.C. on Canada’s West Coast.