The US Supreme Court has ruled that the US Forest Service did have the authority to grant a right-of-way to allow the 1.5 bcf/d (15.5 bcm/year) Atlantic Coast gas pipeline project to cross the Appalachian Trail in West Virginia and will issue a decision on the project by the end of June 2020.
The US$7.5bn Atlantic Coast gas pipeline project is developed by a joint venture of Dominion Atlantic Coast Pipeline (Dominion Resources, 48%), Duke Energy ACP (40%), Piedmont NACP Company (a subsidiary of Duke Energy, 7%) and Maple Enterprise Holdings (an affiliate of Southern Company, 5%). The gas transmission project would deliver fracked gas from the Marcellus and Utica shale in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia to North Carolina and Virginia.
In December 2018, the Fourth US Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a federal permit allowing the project to pass through a major hiking trail and two national forests, prompting the project developer to lodge an appeal. The project has been on hold since this December 2018 ruling and the lengthy approval process will delay its completion until 2021 and is likely to raise its costs by an additional US$250m to US$7.75bn.