Northeastern families are heading into a cold and costly winter. Heating oil averaged more than $6 a gallon in October, up more than 70% from a year ago, according to EIA data cited by The Washington Post, and EIA expects households that heat with oil to spend about 21% more this winter than last. Most of those households are in the Northeast.

Relief is sitting a few hundred miles away in the Marcellus Shale, and New York won’t let it through. For a decade, the state has weaponized the permitting process to stall the Constitution Pipeline, a 125-mile line that would carry Pennsylvania natural gas into New York. Northeastern families are the ones paying for it.

The federal government has now formally declared pipelines essential to national defense, and it’s putting money behind restarting Constitution. What Washington can’t do is issue the one state approval that matters. That’s why permitting reform matters more this winter than any executive order.

How New York turned a water permit into a roadblock

Section 401 of the Clean Water Act allows states to sign off on federally approved projects that cross their waters. After all, states have a legitimate role in protecting their own water. The problem is how far New York has stretched that role: a review meant to answer one question (will this project meet water quality standards?) has become a tactic for stopping interstate infrastructure that federal regulators already reviewed and approved.

New York has run this play before. In 2016, the state Department of Environmental Conservation denied Constitution a water quality certification, resulting in years of litigation. The developer, Williams, walked away in 2020, and the project’s owners wrote off more than $350 million.

The project came back in 2025, and New York picked up its permitting games right where it left off. Constitution filed a new water quality application in May 2025, DEC marked it incomplete, and the company withdrew it in November 2025. In January, DEC told federal regulators it never waived its authority over the permit, and in May it sued the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to keep the fight going.

Washington pulls out the Cold War playbook

To break through bottlenecks like the one in Albany, the administration has reached for a Cold War-era law. On Oct. 22, President Trump signed a memorandum under the Defense Production Act (DPA) declaring domestic petroleum production, refining, and logistics essential to national defense.  The memo names the problem directly: without federal action, industry can’t deliver energy in a “timely manner due to constrained financing, long lead times, permitting and infrastructure bottlenecks, and supply chain limitations.”

The Department of Energy (DOE) had already aimed that authority at Constitution. On Oct. 19, it committed up to $42 million in DPA Title III funding to the project. But that money covers environmental reviews, engineering and other pre-construction work. It doesn’t buy a water quality certificate from New York, and nothing in the DPA lets the federal government issue one in the state’s place.

Why natural gas is the answer

A natural gas pipeline won’t change the price of a gallon of heating oil overnight. What it would do is give homes, businesses and power plants in New York and New England access to one of the largest and most affordable natural gas supplies in the world, sitting a few hundred miles away. That would keep the region from depending so heavily on the most expensive heating fuel in the country.

The cost of going without is already showing up in bills. The Interstate Natural Gas Association of America (INGAA), which represents the nation’s interstate pipeline companies, has noted that pipeline bottlenecks keep Northeast natural gas prices above the national average in winter, and constrained capacity drove sharp price spikes across the region during January’s Arctic freeze.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright put it plainly when DOE announced the funding: “Despite America having an abundant supply of low-cost natural gas, tens of millions of Americans have limited access to this reliable energy source due to a lack of pipeline infrastructure.” The Marcellus is one of the most productive natural gas fields on the planet. Getting that gas to the people a few hundred miles away is the last missing piece.

The fix is in Congress, not the Oval Office

Emergency powers can get a project moving again, but they can’t guarantee it gets built. The only sure path to success is permitting reform.

The Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act, written by Sens. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), would limit Section 401 reviews to actual water quality requirements. It would also allow states to deny a permit only on clear and convincing evidence that no change to the project could bring it into compliance, and cap the review period at nine months for interstate natural gas pipelines. On Nov. 9, the Senate voted 73-25 to begin debate on the bill, well past the 60 votes it needed, and the bill now moves into amendments ahead of a final vote.

That’s the difference between asking for a pipeline and building one. If the federal government is going to call this infrastructure essential to national defense, Congress should make sure one state agency can’t block it for another decade.

Bottom Line: 

Washington has done its part. The supply is sitting in the Marcellus, the federal government has called this pipeline a national security priority and put money behind it, and New York is still stalling the one permit that matters. Executive action can only go so far. 

Congress can finish the job before the session ends by passing permitting reform that keeps one state from holding interstate infrastructure hostage indefinitely. Until it does, Northeastern families will keep paying for Albany’s delay.