By Ted Caddell

Duke Energy, Dominion Resources and other partners last week proposed a 550-mile, $5 billion pipeline to carry natural gas from the Marcellus and Utica shale formations to Virginia and eastern North Carolina.

The “Atlantic Coast Pipeline” would carry 1.5 billion cubic feet of gas per day.

Originally, the pipeline was solely a Dominion project. The company announced its intention to build what was then called the Dominion Southeast Reliability Project earlier this year.

Separate from Dominion’s project, Duke and Piedmont Natural Gas solicited proposals in April to bring natural gas into North Carolina. Now Duke, Piedmont and AGL Resources have agreed to join together with Dominion.

Duke will own 40% of the pipeline. Dominion, Piedmont and AGL will own 45%, 10% and 5% respectively.

Six utilities — Duke Energy Carolinas, Duke Energy Progress, Virginia Power Services Energy, Piedmont Natural Gas, Virginia Natural Gas and PSNC Energy — will buy the majority of the pipeline’s capacity in 20-year contracts.

Dominion, which will oversee construction and operation, said it expects to seek FERC approval by 2016. The partnership said it could be in operation by late 2018.

Duke found itself in need of additional sources of gas following its acquisition of Progress Energy and its efforts to reduce its reliance on coal-fired generation. It closed half of its 14 coal-fired plants in the past three years, built five gas-fired plants in North Carolina since 2011 and plans on building another gas-fired plant in South Carolina.

Historically, the Southeast has received natural gas from wells in Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas. Supply problems and other constraints have sometimes driven gas prices up.

The boom in shale gas production meant the emergence of a northern source of low-priced fuel. The Atlantic Coast Pipeline is the first project designed to deliver those supplies to Virginia and North Carolina. The pipeline will carry gas from the shale fields in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia.

Dominion says it has already reached agreements with about 70% of the landowners on the route to allow them to survey.

While the partners and elected officials applauded the announcement — Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe called it a “game changer” for industry and residential customers — environmentalists are less than enthused.

“Today Gov. McAuliffe has made a huge mistake that harms the environment,” said Mike Tidwell, executive director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. “Barely two months after re-launching the state’s climate change commission, the governor has regretfully embraced a Dominion gas pipeline project that threatens to contribute significantly to the climate crisis.”

Tidwell said the pipeline will encourage more fracking and contribute to methane emissions.

“There is enormous leakage from the fracking process, and enormous leakage from the distribution pipelines, where it gets off the main pipeline,” he said Friday. “It gets down to the municipals and the counties, and [those pipelines] are all old and they’re leaking like sieves.”