North Carolina, Virginia officials use polluters' ghostwritten letters to boost fossil fuel projects
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A series of natural gas projects are receiving support from mostly Republican officials in Virginia and North Carolina, who mainly signed off on the ghostwritten language of lobbyists and consultants working with pipeline firms to make their plans a reality. According to Huff Post, at least two Transco pipeline expansion projects and two pipeline replacement projects had the support of lawmakers who submitted letters to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission containing language proposed by Williams Companies Inc. and TC Energy Corporation. This information came to the Huff Post courtesy of a public records request filed by the Energy and Policy Institute, a watchdog organization dedicated to combatting fossil fuel misinformation.
In at least one instance, officials barely changed a thing when presented with a draft letter. Mecklenburg County, Virginia, Administrator Wayne Carter proposed “minor tweaks,” according to Huff Post, before signing off on and submitting a letter of support for Williams Companies’ Southside Reliability Enhancement Project, which would impact 117 acres of land and include the building of a new compression station in Mecklenburg County, pipeline replacements, and upgrades to an existing station in North Carolina. Carter received the letter from Advantus Strategies President Robert Crockett, who’s a lobbyist for Williams Companies. Republicans like Virginia state Sen. Frank Ruff and state Delegates Tommy Wright Jr. and Les Adams all submitted FERC letters with identical or similar language found in Carter’s letter.
As Huff Post notes, Ruff and Wright “submitted nearly identical letters to FERC in March in support of Williams’ separate Commonwealth Energy Connector Project, another Transco expansion aimed at increasing natural gas supply to southeastern Virginia.” It’s worth noting that Williams Companies is one of a few dozen oil and gas companies that donated thousands of dollars to Ruff’s past political campaigns. The list is much shorter for Wright, though Williams Companies ranks as one of his top oil and gas industry campaign donors. The problem extends into North Carolina, where some of these pipeline expansions would be headed.
Lobbyist Wayne King, a former North Carolina Republican Party vice chairman, successfully got some of his talking points to be included verbatim in letters of support for the Transco pipeline projects from Republicans Tim Moore, who is state House Speaker, and Mooresville Mayor Miles Atkins. Republican state Sen. Bob Steinburg also piggybacked off those same Williams Companies talking points. Unsurprisingly, Moore received campaign donations from Williams Companies in the past and therefore was fairly sympathetic when approached by King. Perhaps Atkins and Steinburg are hoping for similar benefits. There’s plenty more similar corruption for similar projects to dig into in the Huff Post article, which is most certainly worth a read.