ACP Cost Overrun Could Run to $1 Billion

The Atlantic Coast Pipeline, originally estimated to cost about $5 billion to $5.5 billion, now is expected to cost between $6 billion and $6.5 billion. That estimate comes from CEO Lynn Good of Duke Energy, one of the pipeline’s four corporate partners, in a Tuesday earnings call, as reported by the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

“Due to delays and more stringent conditions in the permitting process, ACP now estimates total project costs between $6 (billion) and $6.5 billion,” Good said. A Duke spokesman affirmed that the pipeline still remains “the most competitive of all the options we evaluated in the early planning phases” and that “consumers in the region will realize significant energy cost savings.”

ACP spokesman Aaron Ruby said he could not confirm Good’s estimate. “We’ll have more information to provide with our financial disclosure next week,” he said.

“It’s no surprise that the cost of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline keeps going up,” said Buppert, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center. “Dominion and Duke chose a route with dozens of complex problems through some of the steepest, most undeveloped lands in the Southeast.”

The big question to Virginians is how much, if any, of this added cost will be passed on to rate payers. At some point, Dominion Energy Virginia (a subsidiary of Dominion Energy, which is the managing partner of the pipeline) will have to file with the State Corporation Commission for permission to build its fuel procurement contract into the rate base. The SCC will have to determine whether the costs embedded in the contract were prudently incurred. That hearing ought to be very interesting.