The facts
Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey wants a gas pipeline, and she wants it fast. In a letter sent Thursday to Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Healey asked that federal reviews and permits for Enbridge’s Algonquin Reliable Affordable Resilient Enhancement (RARE) project “move without delay,” and that “sufficient staff and resources are dedicated to completing the required reviews in time to preserve the project’s planned 2028 in-service date,”
This is the same Maura Healey who, as the state’s attorney general, sued ExxonMobil in October 2019, accusing the company of deceiving Massachusetts consumers and investors about climate change. At an April 2022 candidate forum, she said, “I stopped two gas pipelines from coming into this state,” naming Kinder Morgan and Access Northeast, and added, “I think I’ve shown my willingness to stand up to the fossil fuel industry and also to oppose new gas infrastructure in this state,” In 2015, her office released a study concluding the state did not need more gas pipeline capacity, and during an October 2022 debate she argued that blocking the pipelines had spared residents “billions of dollars,” telling builders, “I said, no, if you’re going to build a pipeline, have your investors pay,”
Then the bills arrived. About half of New England’s power comes from natural gas, and Massachusetts residents pay about twice the national average for electricity. State utility regulators estimated the RARE expansion, which would add 73,500 dekatherms of natural gas per day, could cut costs for roughly 600,000 Eversource customers by about $40 million annually for 10 years. Healey’s letter also signaled openness to Project Beacon, a larger Enbridge proposal about four times the size of RARE: “There may be,” she wrote to Wright, “more opportunities ahead.”
Enbridge spokesperson Melissa Sherburne said the company appreciates “the Governor’s focus on solutions that deliver reliable, affordable energy for the Northeast.” Environmental groups were less thrilled: Caitlin Peale Sloan of the Conservation Law Foundation said the letter “unwittingly adopts the false narrative that expansion of gas infrastructure will lower heating costs,” Marcellus Shale Coalition president Jim Welty welcomed what he called Healey’s “belated awakening to this reality.”
Our take
You have to admire the shamelessness. Most politicians flip-flop on a timescale of years. Healey did it on a timescale of electric bills. For the better part of a decade she was the climate movement’s attack dog: suing Exxon, strangling pipelines, releasing studies that proved with science that Massachusetts needed no new gas capacity whatsoever. Her residents now pay twice the national average to keep the lights on, and suddenly the science says build the fucking pipeline, and hurry.
The best part is the letter itself. She didn’t just quietly approve the thing. She wrote to Trump’s Energy Secretary, the administration she built her brand opposing, and asked him to move “without delay,” with extra staff, please, because there’s a 2028 deadline. This is a woman who once told pipeline companies to have their investors pay, now asking the federal government to throw bodies at the paperwork so gas can flow faster. The pipeline lobby’s response was the political equivalent of a pity fuck: Enbridge thanked her for her “focus on solutions” while the Marcellus guys welcomed her “belated awakening to this reality”, which is oilman for took you long enough, dumbass.
And her own side is furious, which is the surest sign she finally did something real. The Conservation Law Foundation accused her of adopting a “false narrative”, as if the false narrative wasn’t the decade she spent insisting Massachusetts could heat itself on good intentions. Healey didn’t discover a new love of fossil fuels. She discovered arithmetic. Turns out standing up to the fossil fuel industry is easy when someone else pays the electric bill, and impossible when 600,000 of your voters are staring at theirs.
