Building a Pipeline in New York Takes More Than Just a Handshake

Last week’s agreement allowing construction to resume on a wind farm off the New York coast was another bit of quid pro quo from US President Donald Trump.

His administration agreed to lift a stop-work order that threatened to sink Equinor ASA’s $5 billion project. In exchange, New York Governor Kathy Hochul said she wouldn’t block new pipelines to bring natural gas from Pennsylvania, according to people familiar with the matter.

Thoughts turned to the Constitution pipeline that would have stretched across New York, connecting gas-rich Pennsylvania with energy-constrained New England. But the developer, Williams Co., pulled the plug in 2020 after years of opposition from local regulators and environmentalists.

The failed project has become emblematic of how US interstate pipelines are almost impossible to build.

Trump said earlier this year he’d like to resurrect Constitution. Back in 2019, during his first presidential term, he even issued an executive order to prevent state regulators from blocking construction.

But it will take more than a handshake to get any pipeline built in New York.

For starters, Williams has yet to publicly recommit to the project. In March, when Trump first raised the prospect of reviving the pipeline, the company responded cautiously, saying it was interested as long as there was support from regional leaders.

Williams didn’t respond to requests for comment last week.

It’s no wonder the company is treading carefully. Williams spent eight years trying to advance the 124-mile-long link. Even ironclad assurances from Hochul may fall short of the certainty required, given the gubernatorial election next year.

The other issue is permitting. For all of Trump’s efforts to shake up Washington, he hasn’t made a dent in the cumbersome bureaucracy that bedevils US infrastructure projects.

The layers of approvals from national, state and local authorities, which can take years to obtain, create boundless opportunities for lawsuits by opponents of the plans.

Fixing federal permitting is the purview of Congress. While lawmakers have talked about it for years, they’ve never found enough room for compromise to get it done.

Given the partisanship of the Trump era, it’s difficult to imagine that changing soon.

–Joe Ryan, Bloomberg News