Motorists should be on the lookout in coming weeks for workers and trucks hauling equipment at locations across southern and central Isle of Wight County where a natural gas pipeline is being built.

Columbia Gas Transmission LLC, a subsidiary of Canada-based TC Energy unaffiliated with Columbia Gas of Virginia, received approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in 2023 for what the company has termed its “Virginia Reliability Project.” The work entails replacing an existing 1950s-era 12-inch-wide pipeline that passes through Sussex, Surry, Southampton and Isle of Wight counties and the cities of Suffolk and Chesapeake with a 24-inch one to provide reliability amid growing demand for energy.

The company said in a June 23 news release that “mobilization for active pipe installation remains underway” and that “work crews are continuing to mobilize to the remaining 2025 locations of work in Suffolk, Isle of Wight County and Southampton County.” Work had paused during the winter.

VRP crews “will be working six days a week from Monday through Saturday during daytime hours,” the news release said, warning “increased work vehicle traffic should be expected along approved truck routes due to equipment and material transportation.”

Project locations include a cleared swath of trees across a section of Broadwater Road, roughly a mile inland from the Blackwater River on Isle of Wight’s side of the Southampton County border and two miles north of Windsor Elementary along Courthouse Highway.

TC Energy told the Times in January that it expects to complete construction and bring the pipeline into service by Nov. 1.

Construction began in July following FERC’s issuance of a notice allowing the company to proceed with construction. As of Oct. 31, the company had completed 23 miles of pipe construction and associated components across the six South Hampton Roads localities. 

The expanded pipeline will connect to existing segments in Prince George and Greensville counties and to the company’s Petersburg and Emporia compressor stations, delivering an additional 100,000 dekatherms per day, a measure of the heating value of 1,000 standard cubic feet of natural gas.

Isle of Wight County supervisors voted in 2023 to accept TC Energy’s offer of $101,822.50 for the acquisition of easements that will allow the pipeline to cross the county-owned Blackwater Park, which includes just over 2,500 acres of forestland nearly 10 miles south of Smithfield along the Blackwater River. The park is open by one-day or annual permits to residents and non-residents for a variety of outdoor activities, including hunting.

The Virginia Reliability Project will take a different path through Hampton Roads than the controversial Atlantic Coast Pipeline that Dominion Energy and North Carolina-based Duke Energy proposed in 2014 and scrapped in 2020. The Virginia Reliability Project will pass near the towns of Dendron in Surry County, Ivor in Southampton County, and continue past the Blackwater Property between Windsor and the county’s courthouse. The ACP would have passed near the towns of Boykins and Newsoms in Southampton County, bypassed Isle of Wight and passed near Suffolk’s Holland community.

TC Energy and Surry County officials did not immediately respond to the Times request for comments on the status of the Surry portion, which according to a project map was to begin construction last year.