Plans for a $1 billion underground fuel pipeline that would run from Belton in South Carolina to Savannah, Georgia, and Jacksonville, Florida have been suspended.

The website Greenville Online is reporting that plans for a $1 billion underground fuel pipeline that would run from Belton in South Carolina to Savannah, Georgia, and Jacksonville, Florida have been suspended.

The Palmetto Pipeline project was stymied by “unfavorable action by the Georgia Legislature regarding eminent domain authority and permitting restrictions for petroleum pipelines,” a statement from energy infrastructure company Kinder Morgan said. The pipeline project was originally projected to begin construction this spring.

The pipeline would have cut through 360 miles of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida, and have a capacity of 167,000 barrels a day. Its route in South Carolina would have snaked through 100 miles of land in Anderson, Abbeville, McCormick, Edgefield and Aiken counties. Lawmakers in South Carolina and Georgia had already taken steps towards preventing the project, which would have needed to use eminent domain ─ seizing private property, usually by the government, for public utilities ─ to construct the pipeline.

Plans for the project also included the construction of a 900,000-barrel tank farm in Anderson County. The project would have affected 92 landowners over 11.1 miles in the county.

Kinder Morgan, the company behind the project, was denied a certificate of need by the Georgia Department of Transportation, and a bill had passed the Georgia House of Representatives and Senate to place a temporary moratorium on the use of eminent domain by pipeline companies. The bill, awaiting signature by Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal, would have enacted the moratorium through June 30, 2017. In South Carolina, a bill was unanimously passed by the state Senate to ban the use of eminent domain by any “private, for-profit pipeline company, including a publicly-traded for-profit company, that is not a public utility.” That would include Kinder Morgan.

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