Murphy Signs Off On Gas Pipeline

WASHINGTON — A fossil energy company now has all the government approval it needs to expand a pipeline across New Jersey, through Raritan Bay and into New York City after the Murphy administration late last week issued an essential permit.

Approving the project is a parting act by Gov. Phil Murphy, a term-limited Democrat, who, after President Donald Trump last year won a second term, said he would “not back down” on climate no matter the administration.

New Jersey signed off on the project, called the Northeast Supply Enhancement Project, hours after New York authorities issued its permit — the final two steps needed for work to commence.

Environmental groups are challenging the project in federal and state courts.

In an interview Friday with NJ Spotlight News, Shawn LaTourette, commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection, said his agency approved the project because the U.S. government has exclusive jurisdiction over pipelines that cross state lines.

The state, he said, has the power to approve or deny permits on a project’s impact to air or water. “We’re not approving a pipeline,” LaTourette said. “We’re only evaluating its adverse environmental impacts and ensuring they are avoided or mitigated for.”

New Jersey environmental regulators twice denied environmental permits for the project, including in 2019, when the state blocked the project, saying dredging in the bay would stir up sediment contaminated with mercury, arsenic and PCBs — cancer-causing human-made compounds — impairing water quality. LaTourette says the most recent proposal addresses those concerns.

Approvals from both states follow sign-offs from a pair of federal bodies — the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, an independent body that regulates pipelines, issued their own permits for the project.

The firm behind the project, the Oklahoma-based Williams Company, plans to build a 23.3-mile pipeline underneath Raritan Bay to bring gas from Pennsylvania, east through New Jersey and to Queens.

Specifically, the pipeline would link Sayreville to the Rockaway peninsula in Queens. Williams proposed drilling 163 piles into the bay floor with mechanical hammers and pistons to “liquefy” the earth below and mount the pipeline, which will be 26-inches in diameter.

The project also includes 3.6 miles of new pipeline to run through Middlesex County and about 10 miles of new pipeline in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

Taken together, this collective segment is part of a national pipeline network known as Transco.

A new compressor station to be built in Somerset County will require a separate permit state regulators have not approved. A public hearing on that permit is slated for Nov. 13.

We’re proud to move NESE forward and do our part in providing New Yorkers access to clean, reliable and affordable natural gas,” Chad Zamarin, president and CEO of Williams, said in a statement Friday. “This project reflects our commitment to deliver clean and reliable energy, while lowering energy costs and supporting economic growth and environmental stewardship.”

Gas is not a clean-burning fuel. Rather, it is one of three fossil fuels, along with coal and oil, and is largely comprised of methane, a highly-potent greenhouse gas dozens of times more powerful than carbon dioxide and a significant force responsible for warming the planet.
Williams and project advocates said the pipeline would help lower electricity projects.

“As demand continues to grow, especially in densely populated areas like Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and Long Island, so too must the capacity to deliver reliable energy,” Williams said in an overview of the project.

Research the group Synapse Energy Economics published in 2020 found Williams will have a surplus of gas until at least 2034. The Eastern Environmental Law Center commissioned that work.

Rita Yelda, a spokesperson for the Natural Resources Defense Council, a national environmental law group, said Friday the group will sue in New York state court over a water quality permit.

The NRDC sued FERC in October, saying the agency based its approval of the pipeline on outdated information.

“New Jersey has completely disregarded its past two, sound decisions to reject this pipeline over threats to the state’s water quality,” Mark Izeman, an attorney with NRDC, said in a statement Friday. “This pipeline threatens not only wetlands across New Jersey, but also would tear up the sea floor of Raritan and Sandy Hook bays.”

LaTourette said approving the project does not undercut the Murphy administration’s goal of achieving 100% renewable electricity for New Jersey by 2035 — an objective codified in law.

“This project doesn’t serve the state of New Jersey and it’s not delivering gas to energy-generating units in New Jersey,” LaTourette said. “Its operation does not affect the state of New Jersey and does not relate to the state’s energy goals one way or another.”

After Trump won the 2024 presidential campaign, Murphy said he would work aggressively to address human-fueled climate change.

“Now more than ever, New Jersey’s commitment to combating and adapting to climate change is unwavering,” Murphy said in November 2024. “Regardless of which administration is in power at the federal level, our state is not going to back down,” Murphy said. “We’re going to do everything we can to reduce emissions, protect our precious environment and build a more sustainable future.”

LaTourette said Williams narrowed its proposal from 2019 and 2020, when the state rejected its permit applications. In earlier applications, Williams had wanted permission to disturb freshwater wetlands more than in its latest proposal, he said.

Environmental groups tore into the Murphy administration’s decision.

“Governor Murphy’s unconscionably dangerous final approval of a polluting methane gas pipeline reverses decades of improvement in our state’s air and water quality, and reverses his own previous permit denial for this pipeline,” Jeffrey Williams, legislative coordinator for the Jersey Shore chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, said, while Amy Goldsmith called the approval “despicable.”

“New Jersey should only be planning, funding and employing people to build squeaky clean renewable energy, not more dirty fossil fuel infrastructure,” said Goldsmith, New Jersey state director for the advocacy group Clean Water Action. “What a terrible legacy to leave the next generation.”

— Julie Daurio contributed reporting.