
Controversial Constitution Pipeline Project Is About to Be Revived
Developers of two left-for-dead natural-gas pipeline projects in New York are preparing to file permitting paperwork with federal energy regulators to move forward with the projects, according to people familiar with the matter.
Pipeline company Williams is set to try again to build the Constitution and Northeast Supply Enhancement pipelines, which would shuttle natural gas from Appalachian gas fields throughout the Northeast.
The resurrection follows President Trump’s decision last week to reverse his April stop-work order on a major wind project off the state’s coast and suggests horse-trading between Trump and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul. They spoke by phone earlier this month in a bid to save one of the signature economic development projects of her administration and deliver a promise Trump has made to bring back the dormant pipeline project.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who has worked to help revive the pipelines, was also part of some of those conversations, according to people familiar with the matter.
The pipeline revival is part of Trump’s push to boost fossil-fuel production and infrastructure while also dismantling much of his predecessor’s efforts to foster renewable-energy development.
Trump has fixated on the Constitution Pipeline, first proposed in 2012 as a 124-mile line to move gas from Appalachia’s shale fields in to New York and New England. The Northeast’s businesses and residents face some of the country’s highest energy costs, despite being on the doorstep of what has become the world’s most prolific gas field, because of limited capacity to deliver fuel into dense coastal cities.
Constitution’s developer, Williams, pulled the plug in 2020 after years in court fighting New York environmental regulators, who refused to issue a crucial water-quality permit.
Williams is also filing paperwork to revive its less memorably named Northeast Supply Enhancement project, which would expand its existing supply lines that run beneath New York Harbor and into the city. Williams stopped pursuing the embattled project last year, seven years after it started.
In a March interview, Williams Chief Executive Alan Armstrong said that the Tulsa, Okla., company would need assurances before pursuing Constitution again.
“We’re not gonna put our head in the vise,” he said. “It would have to be a pre-rolled out red carpet, frankly, for us to go back in.”
Hochul made no deal with Trump regarding specific pipelines when she convinced the president to reverse course on the Empire Wind energy project, a spokesman for the governor said.
Yet the governor hasn’t taken the same hard line on natural gas as her predecessor Andrew Cuomo. Her administration earlier this year approved permits to expand a gas pipeline that serves the state.
In a statement about the wind farm, she said she would work with the Trump administration and companies on “new energy projects that meet the legal requirements under New York law.
“In order to ensure reliability and affordability for consumers, we will be working in earnest to deliver on these objectives,” she said.
She didn’t mention pipelines, but that was what Trump administration officials and energy executives heard. Burgum said on social media that Hochul showed a “willingness to move forward on critical pipeline capacity.”
It isn’t clear if other scuttled pipeline projects will return. Buffalo’s National Fuel Gas last year abandoned plans for its Northern Access project a decade after it first proposed a 97-mile pipeline to bring Pennsylvania shale gas to western New York.
“National Fuel doesn’t intend to revive its Northern Access project at this time, but the company is open to developing pipeline projects in New York in the event New York’s policymakers signal support for such projects, including a willingness to issue key permits,” a spokeswoman said.