Healey Sued Exxon Over Climate Change. Now She Wants Trump’s Energy Secretary to Rush a Gas Pipeline.

Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, the Democrat who as attorney general took ExxonMobil to court over climate change, has asked President Trump’s Energy Secretary to speed up federal approval of a natural gas pipeline expansion. In an October 1 letter to Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Healey urged Washington to move fast on Enbridge’s Project RARE, an upgrade to the Algonquin gas pipeline that feeds New England.

Her pitch was about money. According to WBUR, Healey said the project “will lower costs for 600,000 customers.” Her administration puts the savings at about $40 million a year.

What she asked for

Healey wants the federal government to set clear timelines for the reviews and permits the project needs, coordinate across federal agencies, and put the resources behind it to keep it on schedule. Just the News, citing CommonWealth Beacon, reported that the letter asks that “sufficient staff and resources are dedicated to completing the required reviews” so the project can hold its planned 2028 in-service date.

In a statement reported by Boston.com, the governor asked federal officials to “move quickly and keep this project on track so customers can see the savings.”

She was careful to cover her flank with the climate lobby. “Moving quickly does not mean cutting corners,” she wrote, adding, according to WBUR, that “Thorough and timely review are not competing goals.”

The project

The Algonquin pipeline runs about 1,100 miles, carrying gas from New Jersey through New York, Connecticut and Rhode Island into Massachusetts. Under Project RARE, Enbridge would replace about eight miles of existing pipe in parts of Massachusetts and Rhode Island with larger-diameter pipe, add a secondary line along a Rhode Island segment, and upgrade a compressor station in Cromwell, Connecticut, WBUR reported. The expansion would add roughly 75 million cubic feet of gas per day to the roughly 3 billion the pipeline already moves.

The state has already bought in. In January, the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities approved two 10-year agreements between Eversource and Algonquin to deliver the additional gas. The savings case rests on replacing more expensive imported liquefied natural gas, which the region leans on in winter. The proposal is now under federal environmental review at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. According to the Healey administration, much of the work would upgrade existing infrastructure rather than build an entirely new pipeline.

From suing Exxon to courting Trump’s Energy Department

The irony is hard to miss. On October 24, 2019, then-Attorney General Healey sued ExxonMobil in Suffolk Superior Court, accusing the company of misleading Massachusetts consumers and investors about climate change. At the time she told reporters that “Exxon didn’t change its business or tell people what it knew,” and that the company was “intentionally deceiving investors by hiding the systemic risk of climate change.”

That was not her only stand against the gas industry. About a decade ago, as attorney general, she opposed two proposed pipeline expansions in Massachusetts, WBUR noted. Now she is the one writing to Washington asking for more natural gas, faster, and she is asking an administration her party has spent years attacking over energy policy.

Healey insists this is not an about-face. She describes her approach as “all-of-the-above” and says she supports energy projects that save ratepayers money and opposes the ones that don’t.

The left is not happy

Her old allies noticed. Vick Mohanka, president of the Sierra Club’s Massachusetts chapter, said the group is “deeply disappointed” in Healey’s choices on fossil fuel expansion. The Sierra Club endorsed her in her first run for governor, when she campaigned as a climate champion.

Larry Chretien of the Green Energy Consumers Alliance called the situation “a delicate dance,” acknowledging the project could cut costs and emissions compared with imported liquefied gas while saying he does not want gas use to rise in Massachusetts.

Why this matters

New England families pay dearly to heat their homes, and the region’s limited pipeline capacity is a big reason it imports expensive liquefied gas in the coldest months. For years, the answer from Boston and Beacon Hill was to block new pipelines and promise that wind and solar would fill the gap. The bills kept coming anyway.

Healey’s letter is an admission of what conservatives have argued all along: cheap, reliable energy still runs through pipelines, and the fastest way to lower a heating bill is more domestic gas, not another lawsuit against the people who produce it.

Credit where it is due: asking for a pipeline her administration says will lower bills for 600,000 customers is the right call. But it is worth remembering who spent years in court treating the industry as a villain, and who is now asking the Trump administration to clear the way for it.

Maura Healey took Exxon to court over climate change, and when the heating bills came due she wrote to Trump’s Energy Secretary for more gas.

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