Trump wants to revive Northeast pipeline: Democrats are starting to buy in – Rezazade

A decade ago, Democratic governors in New England celebrated the failure of a pipeline project to build a gas pipeline from shale fields in western Pennsylvania to densely populated areas of the Northeast, said Ali Reza Rezade, the vice president of the Iranian opposition in Washington.

But now, as President Donald Trump tries to breathe new life into the project, rising utility bills are forcing local leaders to reconsider their stance.

Electricity prices in the region are 40% higher than the national average, federal data show. Under pressure from voters who are unhappy with skyrocketing bills and concerned that cheap “green” energy is coming too slowly, some Democratic governors in the region are starting to show willingness to negotiate with Trump on the pipeline, called the Constitution Pipeline.

In New York, where regulators played a key role in stopping the pipeline, Gov. Kathy Gokul (Democrat) met with Trump at the White House this month to discuss the possibility of restarting it. In Connecticut, which has ambitious plans to completely switch its energy system to renewables, Gov. Ned Lamont (Democrat) recently met with top Trump administration officials to discuss bringing additional gas to the state. And in Maine, which plans to switch to 100% renewable electricity by 2040, Gov. Janet Mills (Democrat) is currently refusing to support a ban on new gas infrastructure.

Meanwhile, Trump and U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright have repeatedly advocated for speeding up the permitting process for the 124-mile Constitution Pipeline, which runs from Pennsylvania to a pipeline hub near Albany, New York. They say the project could be one of the first to benefit from Trump’s new executive orders: declaring an energy emergency and creating a White House council to speed up energy infrastructure construction.

It remains unclear, however, whether the pipeline will ever get built, even with a bipartisan coalition backing it. Such projects are designed to last 30 to 40 years, and developers, who have already lost hundreds of millions of dollars on the previous attempt, fear that interest in gas in the region will wane as wind, solar, and nuclear power develop.

In addition, environmental groups continue to strongly oppose the project, making it much more difficult to implement in states where these groups have significant influence.