Virginia Supreme Court Hears Arguments Over Sierra Club’s Affiliates Act Challenge to Atlantic Coast Pipeline Deal

RICHMOND, VA -- Yesterday, attorneys for the Sierra Club and Appalachian Mountain Advocates (Appalmad) appeared before the Virginia Supreme Court to present oral arguments in Sierra Club v. State Corporation Commission. The Sierra Club urged that the Commission violated Virginia law by failing to review Dominion’s deal for fracked gas shipping capacity on the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) for potential conflicts of interest. Because Dominion and ACP are corporate affiliates, the state’s Affiliates Act requires Dominion -- a regulated utility -- to receive prior review and approval from the Commission before it can enter into deals like this. Neither Dominion nor the Commission have ever acted on this requirement.

The Dominion-ACP deal will last for 20 years and is likely to cost customers billions of dollars. As a result, Dominion Energy, Inc. -- the parent company of the utility and ACP -- stands to reap major profits from this deal, while ratepayers will likely be stuck with the bill.  Worse still, Dominion doesn’t even need this deal in the first place: it already has all the pipeline capacity it needs from Transcontinental.

The Sierra Club and Oil Change International have released The Art of the Self-Deal, a report detailing how these kinds of arrangements work.

In response, Sierra Club staff attorney Andres Restrepo released the following statement:

“The Affiliates Act is crystal clear: Dominion cannot enter into this expensive and unnecessary deal with the fracked gas Atlantic Coast Pipeline unless the Virginia State Corporation Commission reviews and approves it beforehand for potential conflicts of interest. Yet Dominion has never satisfied this basic legal requirement, and the Commission has not acted on its duties. That’s why we’ve taken this case to the Virginia Supreme Court.”