A major residential developer west of Las Vegas, NV, on Monday filed a lawsuit against Kern River Gas Transmission Co. in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas to block the Wyoming-to-California pipeline’s plans to raise pressure in the line to bump up the throughout of the supplies from the Rockies to Southern California. A Kern River spokesperson told NGI the pipeline is expecting a FERC decision on the pressure upgrade before the end of May.

Kern River is still intending to launch the increased pressure through its pipeline by November next year, the spokesperson said.

A unit of Chicago-based General Growth Properties Inc., Howard Hughes Corp., filed the lawsuit, citing safety concerns and alleging that Kern River has violated a 1993 settlement in which it committed to keeping the interstate pipeline’s pressure at 1,200 psi as it winds through the residential community of Summerlin. Kern River’s proposal at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) asks to increase the pressure to 1,333 psi from Wyoming to the hub at Daggett, CA.

In its lawsuit, the developer said it objected to the Kern River project being built over its land, and it challenged the pipeline in the early 1990s. In turn, Kern River sued to pursue its development and the two sides finally settled in 1993. The Summerlin developers claim Kern River agreed in that settlement never to raise the pressure on the pipeline that runs through existing residential neighborhoods as well an undeveloped lands on which Hughes is planning to build.

Kern River’s spokesperson would not comment on the lawsuit or the potential for another settlement.

The repressuring and lawsuit are separate from a second upgrade that Kern River is pursuing, adding 29 miles of 36-inch diameter looping pipelines and compression north of Salt Lake City. That project is just in the early stages of the review by FERC, the spokesperson said.

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