Marty Gordon
NRVsports@mainstreetnewspapers.com
Mountain Valley Pipeline has announced plans to build a sub-station near its current route in Elliston.
The sub-station, commonly known as a compression station, is a natural gas facility located along a pipeline route that compresses gas in the line to increase pressure, allowing it to flow through the line toward its intended destination.
Friction and elevation changes induce pressure drop on the natural gas traveling in a pipeline and must be periodically compressed to ensure consistent pressure and efficient delivery.
The proposed Swann Compressor Station will include four buildings (two electrical control buildings, an office building, and an air compressor building) along with gas driven turbine structures and associated equipment. The tallest components will consist of three turbine stacks, at 55 feet in height.
The MVP Mainline, a 303-mile interstate natural gas transmission pipeline system that spans from Wetzel County, West Virginia, to Pittsylvania County, Virginia, entered operation in June 2024 and achieved its full operational capacity of two billion cubic feet of natural gas per day (Bcf/d) in January 2025 and recently celebrated its one-year anniversary of entering service.
Spokesperson Shawn Day calls MVP an American success story.
“Thousands of men and women worked diligently for years to complete this important project, persevering through the repeated challenges and delays caused by opponents whose actions hindered landowners along the route and families and businesses across the eastern United States.”
Now that this critical system is in operation, according to Day, MVP has proven to be an integral component in our nation’s energy infrastructure system.
“It is part of a national network of more than two million miles of natural gas pipelines operating safely, reliably and efficiently, out of public sight and mind, and supplying the lower-carbon energy needed to power modern life,” he said.
MVP held an community information meeting for the public earlier this week at the Meadowbrook Library, just two miles from the proposed location.
All of this is, according to the company, in response to growing demand for more capacity on the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) Mainline system, Mountain Valley Pipeline, LLC, has applied to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for authorization to build the “MVP Boost” project, which is a proposed expansion of the MVP Mainline’s capacity, adding compression at three existing compressor stations in West Virginia and constructing the new compressor station in Virginia.
The New River Valley parcel is immediately adjacent to the existing MVP Mainline. The company says the addition of modern, high-efficiency compressor units in both states will provide the horsepower needed to support the increased capacity enabled by the MVP Boost project, while continuing to operate within the maximum allowable operating pressure that the pipeline was designed, tested and approved to safely operate.
The project is designed to provide timely, cost-effective access to the growing demand for natural gas for use by local distribution companies, industrial users, and power generation in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern United States. Mountain Valley Pipeline, LLC.
In a statement, Day said MVP reached full capacity earlier this year and the compressor project would increase capacity by 25 percent. The company currently has three other compression stations, located in Wetzel County (WVA), Braxton County (WVA) and Fayette County (WVA).
The Swann Compressor Station would be built on land owned by Mountain Valley at 6684 Cove Hollow Road, Elliston.
The station would be driven by turbine engines powered by natural gas and utilize a fraction of the gas coming through the station from the pipeline as fuel and will compress the remainder for transport and delivery.
Like the three existing compressor stations, MVP says the new station will be monitored 24/7 by an offsite system and will have remote devices with the ability to observe, control and shut down operations in the event of an emergency. Equipment, controls and safe operating practices will be utilized to minimize emissions, which will comply with all applicable air quality regulations as permitted by regulatory authorities.
Environmental groups fought for over 10 years to stop the project but in the end was not able to. Now similar groups are expressing concern over the compression station.
Many spoke out during a public meeting last month at the Meadowbrook Library, saying the station could cause problems like noise, pollution and increased traffic.
Crystal Mello, with the group Protect Our Water, Heritage, Rights Coalition, expressed concerns about “blowdowns”, which happen when compressor stations are depressurized for maintenance. She pointed out these events release large amounts of gas into the air.
In a 2023 study by Virginia Scientist-Community Interface, a group comprised of doctoral and master’s students from the University of Virginia and Virginia Tech, found that compressor stations do emit pollutants. The study is called “Community Health Impacts from Natural Gas Pipeline Compressor Stations”,
Currently, there are more than 1,200 compression stations along the two billion of natural pipelines in the United States.
Hannah Mast, an environmental scientist at the University of Virginia and co-author of the 2023 study which was published in GeoHealth, said compressor stations emit a lot of air pollutants that are harmful, but there hasn’t been a lot of work to study those air pollutants in-depth.
The study said pollutants are released the entire time the compressor is in operation, but they are released in higher concentrations during scheduled maintenance of the system, the blowdowns, which flushes the system and releases a large volume of high-pressure gas.
Protect Our Water, Heritage, Rights (POWHR) is an interstate coalition representing individuals and groups from Virginia and West Virginia dedicated to protecting water, land, and communities from harms caused by the expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure, including the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP).
In a statement, POWHR said this proposed compressor station does not provide residential or business gas service to the local community. “Residents are being asked to take on the health and environmental risks without receiving any of the benefits.”
MVP says all of the proposed new compression will incorporate state-of-the-art emissions reduction technologies and will be powered by a fraction of the natural gas being transported by the MVP Mainline, thereby reducing potential environmental impacts and costs associated with building electric infrastructure in remote regions to power station sites.
Shaw pointed out natural gas compressor stations are safe, reliable and tightly regulated to ensure operational emissions remain below thresholds recognized by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as protective of public health. MVP’s existing compressor stations comply with all applicable state and federal requirements. The MVP Boost team has voluntarily committed to incorporating state-of-the-art technology and best practices to reduce emissions from its compressor stations.
MVP Boost’s new Swann Compressor Station, planned in Montgomery County, Virginia, would be a minor source of emissions and qualifies for a minor new source review (NSR) permit, which is Virginia’s Pending regulatory approval.
Construction is targeted to start in the winter of 2026-2027, with an in-service date targeted for mid-2028. The public can submit a comment to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) by Dec. 19 concerning the Elliston project.
