Billionaire governor Jim Justice promised a revival of West Virginia's fossil fueled economy at a gathering of Chamber of Commerce types a year ago. He hosted the event at his own Greenbrier luxury resort. Since then several key energy projects have run into delays or have been cancelled. Plans, dating back to 2013, for an ethane cracker plant in Wood County were canned; a promised Chinese investment of more than $80 billion in natural gas industry projects, announced in 2017, has not materialized; and efforts to land a massive underground storage facility for natural gas byproducts ran into congressional opposition, according to Pro Publica. The six hundred mile Atlantic Coast pipeline was scrapped after delays and questions arose about whether it was needed. The number of active drilling rigs was down from twenty in the second quarter of 2019 to just 5 by the third quarter. COVIO-19 has also had a massive depressing effect on the state's energy sector with a projected 20% drop in jobs for 2020.
Much of the current legal controversy over the Mountain Valley project surrounds Clean Water Act "dredge and fill" permits from the Army Corps of Engineers, which constructors need to conduct work in streams affecting the right of way. Both the Corps and state regulators are in the process of again altering the projects parameters (pipe size) and regulatory requirements so the pipeline qualifies for streamlined permitting while the Fourth Circuit litigation goes forward on the merits. The courts have ruled that conservationists are likely to prevail because regulators have overruled scientific findings related to environmental impacts of the project. The pipeline owners are complaining about the mounting costs of delay caused by the granting of injunctive relief. Of course, conservationists are objecting to the exploiters moving the goal posts during the game.