“Criminal Violations May Have Occurred”

That’s what happened the last time Cooper’s admin reviewed a pipeline permit.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…

The Cooper Administration will soon have to decide on issuing an environmental permit for the MVP-Southgate natural gas pipeline. The project is critical to securing North Carolina’s energy future. Natural gas fuels 36% of the state’s entire electricity generation, and right now the state relies on only one pipeline for its supply. We saw just two years ago what happens when a sole-source pipeline goes down for even a few days.

The last time the Cooper Administration decided an environmental permit for a gas pipeline under existing statutes, three former federal investigators concluded “criminal violations may have occurred.”

The federal agents – one former FBI Special Agent and two former IRS Criminal Investigation Division agents – issued an 82-page report compiled from dozens of interviews and thousands of pages of records in the aftermath of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline debacle. They wrote that it is reasonable to conclude:

Governor Cooper improperly used the authority and influence of his Office to cause the ACP partnership to commit to a $55 million “Mitigation Fund” that the Governor placed under his complete control. Governor Cooper continued to use his authority and influence to delay the ACP permitting process until the ACP partners agreed to increase the fund amount to $57.8 million.

Also, from the information presented in this report, it would be reasonable to conclude that Governor Cooper used the influence and authority of his Office to pressure parties involved in the Nameplate Dispute [a contract dispute between Duke Energy and solar companies], to enter an agreement that favored the solar industry at the cost of $100 Million to the ratepayers of North Carolina.

Very recent history makes clear that the Cooper Administration can resort to all sorts of shenanigans to bend existing state laws surrounding environmental permits for natural gas pipelines.

What’s to stop it from happening again?