NJ environmentalists appeal to block controversial pipeline

The council’s approval broke two state laws, the group’s attorney Andrew J. Provence said.

A 2018 law prohibits offshore oil and natural gas development in state waters, including pipelines that transport fuels, Provence said. And the 1997 law establishing the council’s duties requires it to find both that a project serves the public interest and that the state has no future use for the land before approving any license or lease — and the council did not make such findings for this project, he added.

The submerged pipeline would run through six miles of the Raritan Bay, impacting over 80 acres of the bay floor, exposing buried toxins, and disrupting commercial shipping, recreational users, and striped bass, flounder, sturgeon, whales, oysters, and other sea life, Provence said.

“It’s going to run straight through Raritan Bay and then through New York Harbor and up to Long Island, where it’s going to exclusively service New York residents. So there’s no benefit to the state of New Jersey,” Provence said. “Public lands, especially tidelands, are for the benefit of the people in New Jersey, to access beaches, to boat, to fish, and that needs to be respected. And it wasn’t here.”

Supporters have said expanding gas supply would alleviate the region’s overburdened electric grid. A Williams spokeswoman told the New Jersey Monitor that the project has been “thoroughly reviewed” by state and federal regulators, including the tidelands council.

“We remain confident in the approvals issued for the project and will continue moving forward through the appropriate regulatory and legal processes,” Williams spokeswoman Cherice Corley said.

Larry Hajna is a spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Protection, which oversees the tidelands council and also approved the project. He said officials do not comment on pending litigation.

The project had been considered dead, with Williams officially rescinding its application in 2024 — but the Oklahoma-based company reapplied to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in May 2025 after President Donald Trump called for more fossil fuel development. The commission approved the project last August, and state regulators in New Jersey and New York green-lighted it in November.

The tidelands council’s May approval of a seven-year utility license came after a five-hour public hearing where more than 40 people aired objections about pollution, the company’s safety record, the project’s impact on sea life, and more.

The pipeline would be part of a larger interstate network known as the Transcontinental pipeline, or Transco, and would transport extracted fracked gas from Pennsylvania through Middlesex County to the bay and beyond. The plan also includes construction of a compressor station in Franklin Township.

Cindy Zipf, executive director of Clean Ocean Action, called the project “not just awful, it’s unlawful.”

“The decision to approve a Tidelands license for NESE is all harm and no gain for New Jersey,” Zipf said in a statement. “Why is New Jersey letting New York contaminate and damage our bay with toxins that will violate NJ’s public health, marine ecosystem, and economy, in exchange for cheap natural gas it doesn’t need? This is outrageous and defies logic and the law.”

Separate legal challenges continue to wind their way through federal appellate courts, with attorneys arguing before the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia earlier this month.

Williams officials have said construction would start this fall, with the pipeline expected to be completed by the end of next year, barring further denials or delays.

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