Mountain Valley Pipeline Stock Prices Hit 52-Week Lows as Project’s Costs Skyrocket, Timeline Slips

“Hat tip” to fracked-gas-pipeline fighter Jon Sokolow on this story. As Jon writes:

“Anyone venture to guess why EQT, EQM and ETRN stocks are all tanking this week? All hit a new 52 week low today. Trade war jitters? Always more complicated than you think, but could it be investors have finally figured out their $5 billion MVP corporate boondoggle will never be finished?”

As you can see from the following graphs, and also read about in this Pittsburgh Business Times story, the stocks of EQT Corp., EQM Midstream Partners and Equitrans Midstream Corp. – all part of a “Master Limited Partnership” building the Mountain Valley Pipeline boondoggle. According to the Pittsburgh Business Times:

• “There are more troubles for the Mountain Valley Pipeline, this time in Virginia.”
• “MVP is right now scheduled to be in service in the middle of 2020 at a cost of between $4.8 billion and $5 billion, $2.4 billion from EQM Midstream Partners LP (NYSE: EQM), a master limited partnership associated with Equitrans Midstream.”
• “In a conference call with analysts last week, Equitrans executives said the project was about 85 percent complete and it was awaiting a reissued permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that could come by the end of the summer. It is also awaiting word on whether a proposed land swap around the Jefferson National Forest will be accepted.”

So we’ll see what happens, but in the meantime, EQT’s stock price has plunged from $27.36/share a year ago to just over $12/share now; EQM Midstream Partners’ stock price has fallen from about $58/share a year ago to around $33/share now; and Equitrans Midstream Corp.’s stock price has fallen from a high of $23.47/share in late 2018 to around $14.76/share now. Not good if you’re an investor in this cluster@#$! of a project.