Feds authorize gas pipeline expansion in Pittsylvania

The federal government has given the Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Co., aka Transco, the green light to expand its pipeline in the Southeast, including Pittsylvania County in Southern Virginia.

In an order issued Jan. 29, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission authorized the company, a subsidiary of Oklahoma-based energy company Williams, to construct and operate the Southeast Supply Enhancement project, or SSE.

It is an expansion of Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line, which extends about 10,000 miles from South Texas to New York, and SSE will expand the pipeline to provide an additional 1.6 million dekatherms of natural gas transportation capacity per day — enough to serve about 9.8 million homes with natural gas for hot water, heating and cooking.

The expansion will begin at Transco’s Compressor Station 165 near Chatham and serves natural gas markets in the commonwealth, as well as the Carolinas, Georgia and Alabama. Transco will add 55.3 miles of 42-inch-diameter pipeline in Pittsylvania County and in Rockingham County, Guilford, Forsyth and Davidson counties in North Carolina, a project anticipated to cost $1.53 billion and set to begin this fall.

The expansion also includes installing two new compressor units at Transco’s compressor station in Pittsylvania County, as well as making modifications to existing compressor and meter stations in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama.

However, some lawmakers, nonprofit leaders and neighbors have publicly argued that the pipeline expansion threatens air and water quality.

“With this authorization, [SSE] now has the right to take private property to build a pipeline that no one wants,” Caroline Hansley, campaign organizing strategist for the Sierra Club, said in a statement. “We cannot allow our communities to be threatened and our streams and rivers to be polluted in the pursuit of pipeline profits.”

FERC commissioners acknowledge in the order that SSE will impact the environment and individuals living near the project’s facilities. However, they go on to say in their order that “the project impacts, as mitigated, would not be significant.”

“FERC’s approval of the SSE project marks a major step forward in strengthening energy reliability across the Southeast, targeting an in-service date in 4Q 2027,” Cherice Corley, a Williams spokesperson, said in a statement Monday. 

Mountain Valley Pipeline growth approved

Another pipeline project in the region also received federal approval recently. On Dec. 18, 2025, FERC approved an amended application for the Mountain Valley Pipeline Southgate project, an expansion that runs a similar path from Pittsylvania County through Rockingham County, North Carolina.

A dozen Democratic state lawmakers sent a letter dated Nov. 25, 2025, to FERC and the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality opposing both pipeline projects.

“Our concerns about both projects are similar, as they pose significant risks to Virginia’s water resources within the Dan River Basin Watershed, to sensitive aquatic and plant species along the route, and to the communities faced with additional, massive methane-emitting gas transmission lines which pollute local air and water,” the letter stated.

In addition to looking at environmental ramifications of both projects, FERC members had to decide whether they served a need.

The FERC order for the Southgate expansion noted that Transco had commented that the Southeast Supply Enhancement Project could “handle all of the Southgate Amendment Project capacity with only minor alterations within its currently proposed footprint.”

Appalachian Voices, a nonprofit environmental organization, agreed with Transco on their position, an exception to the rule. FERC commissioners, however, took an opposite view.

“Allegations that the project is not needed because Transco’s proposed Southeast Supply Enhancement Project could handle the … volumes are not persuasive,” they wrote in the Dec. 18, 2025, order.

There may be more pipeline projects involving Pittsylvania County to come. In the first quarter of 2025, Williams hinted at another future expansion of its Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line, this one designed to meet Virginia’s voracious appetite for power related to data center growth.

The potential project, known as Transco’s Power Express pipeline, would carry an additional 950 million cubic feet of natural gas daily to markets north of Station 165 in Pittsylvania County.

“This project will provide the same kind of return as our Southeast Supply Enhancement project, and the demand for this capacity has been robust,” former Williams President and CEO Alan Armstrong said during an earnings call.