Scott Fallon

Staff Writer, @NewsFallon

The proposed 178-mile oil pipeline between New Jersey and New York may have suffered another setback.

In letters to New York environmental regulators, two oil terminals in Albany, New York, said that they have no plans to partner with Pilgrim Pipeline, the controversial dual pipeline that would travel through some of the most environmentally sensitive areas of the New Jersey Highlands.

The Connecticut-based pipeline company had said in a 2015 filing with New York regulators that it would connect with Global Partners and Buckeye Partners terminals to transport crude and refined oil between New York and New Jersey.

A Pilgrim spokesman would not comment Friday on what impact the companies’ refusal would have on the project.

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“While we don’t discuss business confidential information, we continue to be pleased with the commercial market’s reaction to, and enthusiasm for, our proposed pipeline,” George Bochis, a vice president for Pilgrim, said in a statement.

The refusal by Global and Buckeye leaves Pilgrim without key partners at either end of its proposed pipeline. Phillips 66, the parent company of the Bayway Refinery in Linden, New Jersey, has repeatedly said it is not interested in doing business with Pilgrim.

Pilgrim, a startup formed by a handful of former energy executives, announced in 2014 that it wanted to build a pipeline that would pump crude oil from Albany to Bayway or oil terminals in the Linden area. Its second pipeline would transport refined fuel, like gasoline and heating oil, back to New York – a total of 16.8 million gallons daily.

The pipeline's route in New Jersey has not been completed, but preliminary maps show it going through the heart of the Highlands in Bergen, Passaic and Morris counties before eventually heading east to Union County.

While the project has received support from some business and labor groups, it has drawn significant opposition from officials and residents living in towns along or near its presumed path. More than 40 New Jersey municipalities, along with five counties and the Legislature in a bipartisan act, have adopted resolutions against Pilgrim. Some, such as Mahwah, Oakland and Bloomingdale, have gone so far as to adopt ordinances that ban oil pipelines in their municipality.

Any decision on whether the pipeline can move forward will likely come from both governors, although Pilgrim has still not filed permit applications with New Jersey officials more than a year after it said it would.

In its 2015 permit application to New York officials, Pilgrim said it would build a pump station at the Global Partners terminal in Albany. But in a Dec. 1 letter to New York state's Department of Environmental Conservation, Global representatives said that Pilgrim “improperly identified” Global as a home for the pump station and that Pilgrim had a “herculean task” in acquiring property along the pipeline route.

Pilgrim also said it wanted to connect a 1-mile lateral pipeline to the Buckeye Terminal in Albany. But Buckeye Partners said in a Dec. 29 letter that it has “no involvement” with the Pilgrim and is “not aware of a potential connection” to its pipeline.

Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, called the companies' refusal a “major setback” for Pilgrim. “Without access to the port terminals, it shows what Pilgrim is really doing is lying and spinning to push this project through,” he said.