Letter to the editor | Mariner East 2 a boon for this region

For more than three years, as the state reviewed permit applications for Sunoco’s Mariner East 2 pipeline, which runs through Cambria County, hundreds of people, including members of the Pennsylvania Energy Infrastructure Alliance, testified at hearings convened across the state to show support for the project.

That’s because energy infrastructure brings local benefits. Today, with construction underway and members of local unions and trade organizations on the job all along the project line, we are seeing the economic transformation being powered by these developments. And the benefits indeed are local.

Mariner East 2 is providing needed ethane for Competitive Power Ventures Inc.’s Fairview Energy Center in Jackson Township, where ground was recently broken for the state-of-the-art energy center (“Ground broken for $700 million CPV Fairview Energy Center,” Oct. 25).

Local distribution points also are opening along the line to supply propane for commercial and residential use in Pennsylvania. And ethane is being delivered domestically from this line to a specialty gas producer that used to get supplies from Europe.

Mariner East 2 is fulfilling its promise as one of the biggest economic opportunities our state has seen in generations, and those benefits irrefutably are being realized locally.

Kurt Knaus

Spokesman, Pennsylvania Energy Infrastructure Alliance