WINSTON-SALEM, North Carolina — By the time Dan Besse clicked open the email message from “sexdemon@mocospace.com,” he knew something strange was going on with the campaign to support a local gas pipeline expansion.
The message urged Forsyth County’s elected commissioners to support a proposal to lay 24 miles of new pipe alongside the existing Transcontinental pipeline in the area.
Hundreds more near-identical messages flooded in to Besse and the other six members of the Board of Commissioners, clogging inboxes and junk folders. But according to two commissioners, when they responded to the messages, their constituents said they hadn’t sent the emails and didn’t know what the commissioners were talking about.
If the barrage was meant to build goodwill for Williams Cos.’ Transco project, Besse said, it backfired.
The “sloppiness” of Williams’ efforts itself didn’t cause a bad outcome for its pipeline project, Besse said. But it sure didn’t help.
“If they’re this sloppy with their advocacy work, what does that say about our concerns about their maintenance, which is the critical thing,” he said. “Is it being placed in a safe location?”
Besse and the Forsyth County commissioners — four Republicans and three Democrats — voted unanimously last week for a resolution raising safety and environmental concerns about the Transco project, saying federal officials should deny a permit for it unless those are resolved. In a statement, Williams said it was “disappointed” in the board’s decision.
The flap over the pipeline expansion here in west-central North Carolina offers a peek behind the curtain at how pipeline developers drum up support for their projects, and how fast things can go awry when corporations try to show “grassroots” enthusiasm.
Williams officials disputed the accusation that their supporters’ emails were faked. An unnamed Williams corporate representative said in an email that “it’s possible someone might forget they submitted a letter,” but the spokesperson said the messages were from local residents who chose to participate.
Yet the company delivered a mixed message in responding to the complaints. Some of what the corporate representative said did not line up with what a Williams community relations employee, Mike Atchie, told commissioners in person at a meeting last month. Atchie said Williams engaged “groups” to communicate with the commissioners and. When pressed, he didn’t confirm that every sender agreed to send the specific message about Transco’s expansion that was delivered.
Jockeying to win over local elected officials is part of the early stages of most any effort to build new oil and gas pipelines — whether the projects involve hundreds of miles of new pipe or, as in this case, dozens of miles.
Community affairs staffers from pipeline companies and organizers from environmental groups trek to city halls and county buildings along the length of the projects to make their respective cases for and against the projects. Cities and counties have little or no say over such projects, but advocates on both sides portray the official bodies’ support as approval from the voters they represent.
With natural gas pipelines, both sides generally want elected officials to send resolutions, in support or opposition, to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. FERC — which consists of five presidential appointees leading an agency with more than 1,000 employees — issues permits that authorize construction and grant companies the government’s power to take property from unwilling sellers.
In some cases, FERC’s role must be explained to local officials more accustomed to ensuring trash pickup, figuring out school budgets and funding police and fire departments.
Lobbying campaigns like this — hard-fought but off the radar of Washington officials — are likely to become more common in local government meetings rooms around the country if President Donald Trump is able to inspire another pipeline building boom.
Industry groups such as the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America say more pipelines are needed. When asked about the Forsyth County email saga, the association didn’t offer suggestions for pipeline developers to maintain public support. But INGAA CEO Amy Andryszak said in a statement that expanding the country’s gas pipeline network “will ensure reliable and affordable energy while also supporting jobs and local economies.”
To Caroline Hansley, a Sierra Club senior organizer fighting the project, Williams is promoting a development that will increase air pollution and introduce new safety hazards. She said the flood of unwelcome emails shows any public trust in Williams, which operates Transco, is misplaced.
A message to “sexdemon” went unreturned.
New pipeline loops
The project here is called the Southeast Supply Enhancement Project, or SSEP. It is one of at least four projects that Williams, an Oklahoma-based company valued at more than $70 billion, is developing to add new compressor stations and extra pipe to its Transcontinental pipeline.
Transco is actually a 10,000-mile system of multiple, parallel pipes that have been moving gas between the Texas coast and New York City since 1950. It’s the largest interstate supplier of natural gas in the country, moving about 15 percent of the nation’s natural gas, including much of the gas used along the Eastern Seaboard.
The SSEP project in North Carolina and southern Virginia would add 55 miles of new pipe in two segments known as loops. One, called the Salem Loop, would add 24 miles of pipe between Winston-Salem and Greensboro in west-central North Carolina. It would run through Kernersville, a small city in eastern Forsyth County that hosts a veterans clinic, and Oak Ridge, a growing suburb in neighboring Guilford County, where there has been sustained opposition to the project.
The other pipeline addition, called the Eden Loop, would follow Transco across the North Carolina-Virginia border in a more rural area. It would use the same path alongside Transco as the proposed MVP Southgate natural gas pipeline.
Another Transco expansion is the Northeast Supply Enhancement project in New Jersey, connecting to New York City. It has been revived amid maneuvering between President Donald Trump and New York’s Democratic governor, Kathy Hochul.
There’s plenty of maneuvering to win endorsements.
In North Carolina, Williams has won the support of officials in Rockingham and Davidson counties, which are rural and conservative. But a town in Davidson County called Midway has formally opposed SSEP. In June, commissioners in Guilford County — a more urban jurisdiction that is home to Greensboro — passed a resolution asking FERC to “meaningfully address safety and environmental concerns” about SSEP.
It wasn’t as strong as the Sierra Club and local opponents had asked for, but it was unanimous from a board that has seven Democrats and two Republicans.
Pipeline critics wanted the commissioners to ask FERC to do a more in-depth, lengthy and expensive environmental review, called an environmental impact statement. Instead, the board asked FERC for a “comprehensive” version of a less intense review known as an environmental assessment.
The Sierra Club’s Hansley said the vote in Guilford County left Williams worried about what might happen in the its neighbor to the west, Forsyth County.
“I think they were getting very nervous about our organizing,” Hansley said.
And they may have been right to worry. The resolution passed last week by the Forsyth County commissioners displayed more skepticism of the Transco expansion than Guilford County by suggesting that FERC “deny” approval if their concerns aren’t addressed properly. Williams said in a statement that the resolution contained “inaccurate claims” from project opponents, but didn’t specify what the company considers inaccurate.
Forsyth County is more conservative politically than Guilford County. Trump lost the county handily last year with 43 percent of the vote. Still, Republicans enjoy a slight majority on the Forsyth County board.
Any public relations problems Williams may have experienced are a speed bump on a path to likely approval of the project by FERC, especially with Trump as president. But if it does win federal approval, opponents will almost certainly challenge the project in court.
‘More robust than we thought’
The emails to Forsyth County officials started in early July. A typical message said the sender was a resident of the county or a city within it, saying the person supported “clean and affordable energy.”
“For this reason, I am writing to express my support for the Williams Transco Southeast Supply Enhancement (SSE) project,” the emails said, according to several copies provided by Besse, including one from “sexdemon.”
The unnamed Williams corporate representative wrote that the emails were from people who sent them from a “landing page” after choosing to participate in the “advocacy campaign in Forsyth County.” It’s not clear how people were encouraged to participate or what would have directed people to that page.
“Importantly, no third party sends these messages; residents must complete the steps and send them themselves,” the representative said, adding that senders could check draft messages before their emails were sent to county commissioners.
Some of what Williams said is also at odds with the Washington-based technology company that delivered the emails, CiviClick.
In an interview and email exchanges, CEO Chazz Clevinger of CiviClick downplayed his company’s involvement, saying it simply provides a platform that can be subscribed to for advocacy campaigns. He said his platform was employed by a third-party company, which he said he couldn’t name, on behalf of Williams to generate supportive emails.
“CiviClick does not run campaigns for anyone. We’re a conduit,” he said. “What you’re asking me is essentially like asking the CEO of American Airlines about what happened in the in-flight movie on a transatlantic flight.”
But Williams said it used CiviClick to send the messages and suggested CiviClick could provide contact details for the sender of each message. Clevinger didn’t respond when asked about that.
Some 1,000 to 1,500 messages — by Besse’s count — were sent to all seven commissioners. This occurred in a county where the issue has been far from top of mind. Most Forsyth County officials are contending with a wrenching financial crisis in the county schools.
Questions about the mysterious avalanche of emails came to a head last month in one of the board’s regular meetings in Winston-Salem. Hansley of the Sierra Club appeared with a local environmental group to make the case against the Transco project. She was followed by Atchie, whose business card says he does “community and project outreach” for Williams, to explain its merits.
Besse and the board’s Republican chair, Don Martin, made it clear to Atchie they found the email campaign to be unusual, especially when they tried responding to a few of the constituents whose email addresses were attached to the messages.
“They didn’t know who Transco was, and they wanted to know why I was sending them emails,” Martin told Atchie, who stood at the lectern before the commissioners. “Tell me how that can happen.”
Atchie told him the company had asked unnamed “groups” that also support natural gas to “communicate” to local elected officials.
“Apparently, it was more robust than we thought it would be,” he said. “So we apologize for that. We’ve asked those groups to stop.”
But the details of how that could happen still bothered Besse. He didn’t think they were each being sent by individual people because they were coming in at all hours, even 3 a.m. He told Atchie he’d never before heard of a campaign in which people sign on to a list that allows a group to be used indefinitely to send messages “without prior review.”
Atchie said the email senders had to “opt in.” Besse asked if they’d opted to send the specific message about Transco’s project.
“They do it on a holistic basis of energy infrastructure, meeting reliable energy needs,” Atchie replied.
Shortly thereafter, Besse moved on. “I don’t want to belabor the point further.”
Sitting behind Atchie, facing the commissioners, the Sierra Club’s Hansley sat straight up, eyes wide, jaw dropped.
