It wasn’t too long ago when Gov. Maura Healey bragged she had blocked natural-gas pipeline expansions in Massachusetts. Now that it’s an affordability-themed election year, she’s pushing the Trump administration to speed up natural-gas pipeline expansion plans. … It wasn’t too long ago when environmentalists pushed utilities to plug existing leaky gas pipelines rather than expand the existing pipeline system. Now that lawmakers are eyeing cuts in conservation programs in order to trim utility bills, they’re suddenly funding studies criticizing utilities for spending too much on leaky pipelines. … And utilities’ emphasis on pipeline fixes have themselves fluctuated over time, depending on their financial incentives and disincentives at any given time.

Ultimately, a lot of this is typical political theater, as each faction jockeys for better position on climate-change and affordability issues. But it’s not entirely political theater. Pipeline politics have had real-world consequences – especially in the form of higher costs for consumers. We’re’ literally paying the price for all the ham acting going on with pipelines.

Update — From a HB reader, who wrote in just prior to my posting the entry above:

Energy Bad Boys is a useful Substack in the Robert Bryce vein covering implications of US energy policy typically at state level on cost and reliability. This weekend, they wrote about the Project Beacon natural gas pipeline expansion and Governor Healey’s welcome support for the project. This past winter appears to be changing minds, slowly and quietly… thank goodness