MA Gov. begs Feds to fast track pipeline approval, after bragging about anti-O&G record

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Governor Maura Healey is asking the Trump administration to move faster on a natural gas pipeline expansion she once made a political career out of opposing. The request landed on October 1, about a month before the November 2026 general election, in a letter to Energy Secretary Chris Wright urging federal agencies to clear reviews for Enbridge’s Algonquin Reliable Affordable Resilient Enhancement project, known as Project RARE.

Healey wrote that she and Wright have discussed “our mutual desire to get more U.S. natural gas into New England to reduce reliance on higher-cost imported fuel and lower costs for customers.” Her office says the project would serve about 600,000 gas customers and cut bills by roughly $40 million a year, or about $400 million over the ten-year Eversource contracts the Department of Public Utilities approved in January. The planned in-service date is 2028; the contracts start November 1, 2029. FERC opened environmental review in February under the pre-filing process.

The political timing is hard to miss. Energy costs are a central issue in her reelection race against Republican Mike Minogue, who has made more pipeline capacity a campaign plank and has criticized the state’s offshore-wind push. Healey’s Thursday statement framed the letter as “all-of-the-above” policy that still includes solar, wind, storage, nuclear, geothermal, hydro, and gas, with the developer — not ratepayers — paying for the build. Environmental groups, including the Conservation Law Foundation, immediately called the savings claim a false narrative.

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As attorney general, Healey treated new gas pipe as something the state did not need and should not finance. In November 2015, she released an Analysis Group study and said Massachusetts could meet reliability needs without more gas capacity, and that electric ratepayers should not pay for pipelines. She opposed Kinder Morgan’s Northeast Energy Direct and Spectra’s Access Northeast.

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At a 2022 WBUR event, she told the audience, “Remember, I stopped two gas pipelines from coming into this state,” and said she opposed building more gas infrastructure. In a December 2025 NBC Boston interview, after critics accused her of rewriting that history, she called the earlier projects a “lousy deal” because ratepayers would have paid.

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Massachusetts residential electricity is among the most expensive in the country. EIA’s 2024 state profile put the average retail price at 23.94 cents per kilowatt-hour, fifth-highest. For calendar 2025, compiled EIA residential averages put Massachusetts at about 30.48 cents per kilowatt-hour, roughly 76 percent above the U.S. average and behind only Hawaii and California.

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The Fiscal Alliance Foundation estimated last week that a broader Algonquin expansion could save Massachusetts ratepayers on the order of $367 million each winter.

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New England still runs on gas, nuclear, and imports, with oil as the winter insurance policy. Stopping pipe did not replace that stack. It left the region buying more expensive LNG and burning more oil when the weather turned.

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