Back on August 22, I wrote that EQT, one of the companies behind the fracked-gas Mountain Valley Pipeline boondoggle/ripoff, had seen its stock price go down, down, down. As I wrote on August 22, EQT stock closed at $11.35/share, down from $21.45/share on May 21 and $28.02/share last August 23. And, I asked, how low can EQT stock go?
Well, now we’re finding out just how low it can go. See below for screen shots of the current stock prices for Mountain Valley Pipeline companies, as well as Jon Sokolow’s Facebook post on the sharp declines in their fortunes in just the past couple days. So…we’re now talking EQT stock at $8.95 per share, down from $11.35/share on August 22 and $21.45/share on May 21. And we’re now talking about EQM Midstream Partners stock at a 52-week low, as is Equitrans Midstream stock. Not looking good for the fracked-gas pipeline folks, in other words.
So what is going on here? Hard to say exactly, but the Mountain Valley Pipeline is facing numerous problems, including:
- This news from November 6: “New York-based utility giant Consolidated Edison (ConEd) is capping its investment in the troubled Mountain Valley natural gas pipeline. ConEd revealed in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing Monday (reviewed by Kallanish Energy) its CET Gas unit will cap its investment in MVP at $530 million. ConEd already has spent $488 million on the 300-mile line.”
- Federal appeals court delivers another major roadblock for the Mountain Valley Pipeline: “Already slowed by the loss of two permits and a lawsuit that challenges a third one, construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline hit another major roadblock Friday. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered a stay to a permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, pending its review of lawsuit brought by environmental groups headed by the Sierra Club. The Sierra Club said Friday’s stay ‘effectively means construction must stop’ on the 303-mile pipeline.”
- Another delay, cost increase for Mountain Valley Pipeline: “The projected cost of building the Mountain Valley Pipeline has gone up by another half a billion dollars. And the expected completion date, most recently slated for mid-2020, has been pushed back to the end of that year. In an announcement Tuesday, Mountain Valley attributed the latest delay and revised cost estimate — now at between $5.3 billion and $5.5 billion — to ‘various legal and regulatory challenges.””
Other than that, things are going just great for the Mountain Valley Pipeline! 😉 May its struggles continue…
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