Climate campaigners are chalking up another win in New York State this week, after Tulsa, Oklahoma-based fossil giant Williams Companies pulled the plug on its proposed 124-mile Constitution gas pipeline and wrote off the US$345 million it had already spent on the project.
“Despite being approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the project skidded into trouble when New York regulators refused to issue water crossing permits, citing environmental concerns.,” the Oneonta Daily Star reports, in an alert picked up by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.
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Now, “Williams—with support from its partners, Duke, Cabot and AltaGas—has halted investment in the proposed Constitution project,” the company said. “While Constitution did receive positive outcomes in recent court proceedings and permit applications, the underlying risk-adjusted return for this greenfield pipeline project has diminished in such a way that further development is no longer supported.”
The mammoth pipeline would have carried a daily load of 650,000 dekatherms of gas, or more than 685,000 gigajoules, from the fracking fields of Pennsylvania to the heart of New York State. “Just last September, Williams voiced optimism about the project, saying then Constitution ‘continues to represent much-needed energy infrastructure designed to bring natural gas to a region of the country confronting natural gas supply constraints’,” the Star writes.
