Groups ask D.C. Circuit to set aside FERC certificate for MVP Southgate gas pipeline 

WASHINGTON, DC – Today, seven conservation and community groups filed a court challenge to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s authorization for Mountain Valley Pipeline, LLC, to construct the MVP Southgate gas pipeline. The petition for review, filed by the Southern Environmental Law Center, Appalachian Mountain Advocates and Sierra Club in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, asks the court to vacate the amended certificate of convenience and public necessity issued by FERC in December 2025. 

The seven organizations filing suit — Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, 7 Directions of Service, Appalachian Voices, Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, Chesapeake Climate Action Network, Sierra Club and Wild Virginia — had presented FERC with expert analysis demonstrating that the pipeline is not needed to meet regional gas demand. FERC ignored that evidence and gave short shrift to significant environmental impacts in authorizing MVP’s costly and damaging project. 

The project is also facing court challenges to the water permits issued to MVP by Virginia and North Carolina. Yesterday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit issued temporary administrative stays of those permits and scheduled an April 28 hearing on motions for further stays. The orders issued yesterday should stop construction along the length of the pipeline route pending further action by the Fourth Circuit. 

“The harms that MVP Southgate would bring to communities in Virginia and North Carolina — higher utility bills, polluted waterbodies and an increasingly unstable climate — are unnecessary, just as the project itself is unnecessary,” said Peter Anderson, Director of State Energy Policy for Appalachian Voices. 

“For Indigenous communities, this is not just a pipeline — it is a continuation of decisions made without our consent, threatening the rivers, burial sites, and cultural landscapes that carry our history,” said Crystal Cavalier-Keck, Co-Founder and Executive Director of 7 Directions of Service. “The Southgate project is unnecessary, and yet again, our communities are being asked to bear the burden of risk for someone else’s profit. We are standing to protect what is sacred — for our ancestors and for those yet to come.” 

“FERC failed to do its duty to fairly consider the environmental and human costs this destructive project will impose,” said David Sligh, Wild Virginia’s Water Quality Program Director. “The commission has favored the narrow profit-making interests of corporations over the wider public interest. We are compelled to oppose this irresponsible approach.” 

“FERC has a duty to protect the cherished rural environment, irreplaceable aquatic resources and undeveloped lands now threatened by the MVP Southgate. All will be lost if this project is allowed to move forward,” said Ann Rogers of Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League. 

“This project is redundant, dangerous, and a clear transfer of ratepayers’ hard-earned dollars straight up to Mountain Valley Pipeline’s shareholders,” said Shelley Robbins, Senior Decarbonization Manager at the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. “FERC should have taken a harder look at the risk this project creates by snaking high-pressure gas under and around two other pipelines, Transco’s Southeast Supply Enhancement Project and the PSNC/Enbridge T15 — all under construction at the same time and in the same confined spaces.”  

“At a time when households across the nation are struggling to pay rising energy bills, we should be investing in clean, affordable energy — not dangerous, expensive pipeline projects like MVP Southgate,” said Caroline Hansley, Organizing Strategist for the Sierra Club. “When FERC approved the proposed Southgate extension, it turned a blind eye to evidence showing this pipeline is unneeded and would do significant damage to our environment and climate. The people who would benefit from the pipeline are gas company executives, lining their pockets with more corporate profits at our expense. We will continue to fight this expensive, dirty project.” 

“FERC had its opportunity to give this project a hard look and find that the South does not need another redundant gas pipeline” said SELC senior attorney Mark Sabath. “The environmental and community consequences of building an unnecessary pipeline are too dire. The people of Virginia and North Carolina should not have to pay the price for this unnecessary project.”  

MVP Southgate would extend the controversial Mountain Valley Pipeline from Pittsylvania County, Virginia, to Rockingham County, North Carolina, to deliver methane gas to Duke Energy and Public Service Company of North Carolina. The project is part of an unprecedented expansion of gas infrastructure across the South, where, in just the last several years, industry has proposed enough new pipeline capacity to fuel dozens of new power plants.