BL England Won’t Repower with Natural gas, Pipeline in Doubt

SEATTLE (Oil Monster):  There is no longer a need for a South Jersey Gas pipeline to the B.L. England electric plant in Beesleys Point, after the plant owner said in court papers Wednesday it no longer plans to repower the facility with natural gas.

But that doesn’t mean a pipeline project is dead, said South Jersey Industries Vice President of Communications Marissa Travaline.

“It may be a different-looking project,” she said, but the company still feels the region needs a second transmission line, in case an accident or natural event damaged the only one serving the Cape peninsula.

Dave Robbins, president of South Jersey Gas, said the company has already begun to explore options for another pipeline to serve the company’s 142,000 customers in Cape May and Atlantic counties.

On Wednesday, an attorney for the company that owns the plant, RC Cape May Holdings, sent a letter to the Appellate Division of Superior Court asking to withdraw the company from a lawsuit against the state Pinelands Commission over its February 2017 approval of the pipeline.

No one from the Pinelands Commission could be reached for comment Wednesday night.

Then, the state Attorney General’s Office, which represents the commission, sent a letter asking for a postponement of the case, due to the changed circumstances.

“Today, Intervenor RC Cape May Holdings ... stated, for the first time, that the B.L. England electric generating plant will not repower and will not be using the South Jersey Gas pipeline,” Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal said in a letter dated Wednesday.

Grewal said that decision undermines the basis for the Pinelands Commission’s approval of the pipeline. The commission had said it approved it because it served a business in the Pinelands and would benefit people living there, and required a new application to the commission if there was any redirection of the gas from the B.L. England plant.

“This means the entire basis for the Pinelands Commission approval of the pipeline is now gone,” said Pinelands Preservation Alliance Executive Director Carleton Montgomery, “because the commission approved the pipeline on the sole basis that all the gas would go to a new plant at B.L. England, a use located inside the Pinelands.”

PPA and other environmental groups had sued the Pinelands Commission over its decision. They disagreed that the pipeline was a permitted use in protected areas of the Pinelands, and with the argument that the pipeline would benefit people who lived in the Pinelands.

Courtesy: www.pressofatlanticcity.com