Manchin Gets Mountain Valley Pipeline Deal Into Debt Bill

[riversedge]

Source: bloomberg



Agreement includes MVP language from larger permitting bill
Pipeline will carry gas from West Virginia to Virgina



By Jennifer Jacobs Updated onMay 28, 2023 at 8:46 PM CDT


Democratic Senator Joe Manchin slipped into the debt-limit deal a measure meant to accelerate a multi-billion-dollar natural gas pipeline that’s been repeatedly stalled on environmental concerns, according to people familiar with the matter.

Manchin has tried for more than a year to secure a side deal for construction of the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline, which cuts through the Democratic lawmaker’s home state of West Virginia. The project stalled after a federal court rejected a permit to cross a national forest.
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Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-05-28/manchin-gets-mountain-valley-pipeline-side-deal-into-debt-bill?sref=yYYRek8e&leadSource=uverify%20wall

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Good comment and question. I have not seen anything about what she may have gotten.

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Sections of steel pipe of the Mountain Valley Pipeline in Bent Mountain, Virginia.

Photographer: Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images

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[I_UndergroundPanther]

1. Fuck you Manchin,polluting profit grubbing pig

Ashamed to call you a democrat.

[BlueMTexpat]

3. My sentiments

exactly!

[CentralMass]

2. Manchin taking care of his employers.

[gab13by13]

4. I have a question,

is this permit facilitation just a one off or was all oil and gas permitting made easier?

[jaxexpat]

6. I don't have a clue but it would be very unusual if it did.

Also, if it did, they just blew up the EPA. That would be a real threat to the cottage industry of attorneys and engineers who've created careers herding projects through vast vacuums of vagueness, ambushed by ambiguity amid the bureaucratic badlands created by irregular and unregulated regulations. The legislative language of vagueness serves its purpose as it provides loopholes and footings for debatable points to counter efficient enforcement while preventing an accurate and predictable quantification of restoration costs. Brilliant in a glaringly nefarious sort of way.

[The Mouth]

10. I like that phrase

" vast vacuums of vagueness, ambushed by ambiguity amid the bureaucratic badlands created by irregular and unregulated regulations."

Awesome arrangement of alliteration.

[jaxexpat]

15. The letters are right there on the keyboard. Thanks.

[farmbo]

16. It also streamlines the permitting of renewable energy projects.

Since the majority of the IRA funding is earmarked for solar, wind, hydro, and green hydrogen, renewables will be a major beneficiary of the Manchin provision in the Debt Ceiling agreement.
So score another one for the good guys.

https://www.eenews.net/articles/debt-ceiling-deal-includes-permitting-reforms/

Although WVa is stuck with that pipeline, they will also be deploying some renewables— if the state permitting authorities will allow them.

[oldsoftie]

5. We're producing more NG every year. It has to be moved somehow.

I have no problem with it; our energy infrastructure is SO far behind. Just like the REST of our infrastructure

[dembotoz]

7. cant stand him but he does bring home the bacon

[mpcamb]

12. The same agreement rids the IRS of $ to chase big tax cheats.

Yes, he does help his employers, but how many West Virginians (besides his employers)
make more than $400,000/year?

[Martin68]

8. Well isn't it nice that there gentleman from West Virginia is supporting the pipeline that I and

many of my fellow Virginians have been fighting for a few years now. These pipelines (there are two others) are a menace to clean water and in direct violation of state and local ordinances designed to protect our streams and rivers from pollution caused by illegal construction practices that include: 1) clearing a 60-foot wide strip of forested land straight down steep mountain slopes 2) excavating crossings in streams and wetlands for the pipe, and 3) violating conservation easements protecting water resources that were intended to be inviolable in perpetuity with a 60-foot wide right of way.

[Bayard]

9. More hostage taking

And once more, the environment pays.

[peppertree]

11. But then, someone's gotta pay for them Maseratis

[appalachiablue]

18. +1

[LudwigPastorius]

13. _

[moniss]

14. Manchin

can be counted on to be an even bigger horse's backside after this gift to him and his owners. It will always be something with this guy.

[onenote]

17. politics equals horse trading

And Joe Biden has been around long enough to understand horse trading.

[muriel_volestrangler]

19. Charles Pierce calls it "appeasing only the back half of a horse"

I'm with the general consensus that the deal was a win for the administration, if only because it's thrown the Insane Crazy Caucus into what my late mother would have called, 'HIGH-sterics." (It's truly amazing, and a bit terrifying, to watch members of Congress express complete ignorance of what the debt-ceiling really is, or to watch members of Congress be merely performatively moronic.) The work requirements for SNAP are loathsome, but McCarthy and his noisy puppeteers got very little of what they'd gamed the system for. But the inclusion of a natural gas pipeline in the resolution of a ginned-up political crisis over a mechanism that should have been abandoned a decade ago makes as much sense as Caligula's alleged elevation of his horse. Especially, as in this case, when you're appeasing only the back half of the horse.
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Kaine is preparing an amendment that would strip the pipeline provision from the final bill. This undoubtedly will get up the nose of President Manchin, but it's hard to see him voting against the final bill because it disrespects his pet pipeline. Of course, if he does, I would remind the universe of marine mammals that Manchin does own a yacht. Just sayin'.

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a44038169/debt-ceiling-pipeline-deal/

The link goes to a Washington Post story about orcas sinking boats.