The beleaguered Mountain Valley Pipeline project will be even more expensive and further behind schedule, the project’s developers told analysts Tuesday. The controversial, already delayed and over-budget 303-mile pipeline would carry fracked gas from West Virginia into Virginia. It will now cost at least $6.6 billion, more than double the original estimate and not be in operation until at least late 2023, about 5 years after it was supposed to be finished.

The project’s developers will seek new permits after suffering multiple, major legal setbacks over key permits, including a state air pollution board determination that a proposed compressor station failed to meet environmental justice requirements. Those losses have already prompted stakeholders to write down over $1 billion of their investments, including NextEra Energy Resources, which wrote off its entire investment after concluding the “continued legal and regulatory challenges have resulted in a very low probability of pipeline completion.”

Roberta Bondurant, co-chair of the Protect Our Water, Heritage, Rights coalition, called the pipeline “a dying project that is sucking the life out of the environment and our communities to postpone its final demise,” and said “The MVP must admit its final defeat immediately, rather than continuing to … waste the precious time we have to address the climate crisis.” (The Roanoke Times, AP, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette $, E&E $)