Breaking News: Rover Officially Delays Phase 1 In-Service

While Energy Transfer has yet to issue a formal news release, a number of press reports indicate that its Rover Pipeline Project has announced that the in-service date for even the limited portion of the project between Cadiz and Defiance will be delayed until "late summer." The statement given to various news outlets by Energy Transfer spokesperson Alexis Daniel states that the delay is due to Rover's continued efforts to work with FERC and the Ohio EPA, and that Rover is still anticipating Phase 2 being in-service on November 1.

For our customers, this comes as no surprise, as we have been reporting, since June 2, that Rover's July in-service date was under severe pressure due to an extremely constrained construction schedule, with little to no margin for any issues such as the various FERC investigations currently being conducted.

Rover appears to be acknowledging that the Ohio EPA has a role to play in regulating the project in Ohio, which could indicate a more cooperative stance by Rover, in contrast to the statement just over a week ago by the Director of the Ohio EPA, indicating that Rover was "stiff-arming" the Ohio EPA. It is unclear, however, whether there is a new attitude and whether this change of tone is due to the recent replacement of the key project personnel, which occurred on July 14, when Rover removed Stephen Veatch (formerly Senior Director, Certificates) and Joey Mahmoud (formerly Executive VP, Engineering) as the primary FERC contacts for the project.

Rover is still sticking to the November 1 full in-service date, but, as we indicated last week in "FERC Pushes Back on Rover July In-Service," a good indicator as to whether the November 1 in-service date for Phase 2 will be achievable will be the timing and the actual findings of FERC's third-party HDD investigation.