A $3B Georgia pipeline changed course — away from a utility leader’s property

Donnie Peek is used to living with a pipeline.

One carrying propane already crossed his property in Fortson, a suburb of Columbus in western Georgia, when he bought the land in 1967. It’s where Peek and his wife raised their family, and he continued to buy adjacent property, expanding his footprint to more than 1,600 acres by the Chattahoochee River.

When Southern Natural Gas — a jointly owned venture of Kinder Morgan and energy giant Southern Co. — said in 2024 it planned to run part of a $3.5 billion gas pipeline along the same easements as the propane one, it made sense to Peek. After all, it would save a lot of time and money.

But when SNG revealed the final route in the spring, Peek noticed the portion going through his neighborhood had changed significantly.

The proposed line went from following the existing propane pipeline easements and cutting across the properties of four landowners to going only through his. That also means more of the pipeline would be on his property to make up for what is not crossing his neighbors’.

One of the neighboring properties it now avoided was one owned by a 25-year Southern Co. employee: Chris Lane, a power plant manager for Plants Addison and Franklin, owned by another Southern subsidiary.

Although officials from Kinder Morgan and Southern deny Lane received special treatment, that the pipeline’s route was changed to circumvent his property raises eyebrows.

‘Big, important project’

Known as the Southern System Expansion 4 project, the proposed pipeline will add to a sprawling 7,600-mile network that connects gas supply basins from Texas to Florida, South Carolina and Tennessee.

A fact sheet for the SSE4 project said the pipeline and the gas it will deliver will provide “critical reliability to the Southeastern grid.”

The data center boom has boosted demand for gas pipelines, as many electric companies, including the ones owned by Southern, are building more gas-fired power plants to meet the electricity needs of these computer-filled warehouses. Georgia Power is adding an unprecedented amount of new electricity to its power grid, much of which will come from gas plants, which critics contend will produce more planet-warming greenhouse gases.

An aerial image shows the Microsoft data center in the background near residential areas in Union City on Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2025. Georgia's data center boom has resulted in a huge planned expansion of power plants by utilities like Georgia Power to serve their energy needs. (Miguel Martinez/ AJC)

“It’s a big, important project for the region,” said Allen Fore, an executive with Kinder Morgan. “Natural gas supply, energy reliability and security, power generation … economic development, all of those things are really, really important.”

That’s not all, Fore said.

“It is, in our view, a lot about local governments, landowners, the folks that see the most direct impacts from construction and making sure that all makes sense,” he said.

Using existing rights of way is a typical practice for pipeline companies because of cost and time savings.

That was why Peek said he was confused. Not only would the new route deviate from an existing right of way, doing so would add 1,400 more feet to the pipeline and millions of dollars to the price tag.

It’s unclear if those costs will be passed along to other gas customers. Kinder Morgan did not give specific information on who pays for those increased costs of the pipeline infrastructure.

As the line enters Georgia in Muscogee County, it cuts northeast through Peek’s property until it hits the boundary of a neighbor’s property. There, the pipeline turns and runs directly east, just south of that neighbor’s property before making a hard turn to the north.

That neighbor? Lane.

‘I’m not even at the table’

Kinder Morgan and Southern have a long history of working together. The SNG venture expands on an existing agreement 10 years ago when Southern bought a 50% equity interest in Kinder Morgan’s pipeline, also called Southern Natural Gas.

At the time, the companies deemed the core of that region — Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina — one of the fastest growing for gas.

After Peek saw the new route, he wrote a letter to Kinder Morgan asking that they revert to the original one. An official from the company’s Land and Right-of-way Department denied his request in a March 16 letter, saying it would, “impact landowners and potentially more landowners.”

The letter is among public documents about the pipeline on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission website.

Peek then turned to Southern Natural Gas, which offered to return the route to its original proposal if he got his neighbors to agree with that move. SNG offered to pay him $300,000 for additional easement rights to his and his neighbors’ land, and Peek said that money would be split between all the landowners.

Lane was Peek’s first stop. Peek said he deemed that conversation unsuccessful.

According to an affidavit filed by Peek with FERC on Aug. 28, Peek said Lane told him “there was ‘no price at which he (Mr. Lane) would allow the pipeline to cross his property,”

Peek’s last stop was talking to a representative with Pinnacle Resources Group, which acts as a liaison between SNG and the landowners. The two had been having conversations about the pipeline every couple of weeks or so, Peek said.

But Peek said it was the last conversation that left him wondering if rerouting the pipeline around Lane’s property was intentional because he is a Southern employee.

Peek said the representative from Pinnacle got an email from SNG’s lawyers while the two were talking on the phone. Then the representative told Peek that Lane’s property could not come under eminent domain.

Pinnacle Resources Group referred questions about the pipeline to Kinder Morgan, which confirmed the nature of the conversation between Peek and SNG. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has not been able to independently confirm details of the conversation between Pinnacle Resources’ liaison and Peek.

That Lane works for Southern had nothing to do with the decision, SNG said.

“There is no policy that exempts Southern Co. employees from this process,” a statement from Southern National Gas emailed to the AJC.

Officials looked at alternatives to the new route and stuck with the deviation because it cut the number of landowners who would be directly affected from four to one, SNG said. This “represents the option that best balances overall landowner impacts with the project’s operational needs.”

As it turns out, Lane had his own, separate ideas for the pipeline route that he offered to Kinder Morgan a year ago.

One proposal would have the pipeline follow existing rights of way for a transmission line near Plant Franklin in Alabama. That route would bypass the neighborhood — and Peek and Lane’s property — entirely.

The second proposal would not enter Lane’s property and would run through Peek’s but not as much, as Lane explained to his neighbor in an email obtained by the AJC.

“I followed up several times but never got any real answers on why this wouldn’t work,” Lane said in the Aug. 6 email to Peek.

For his part, Peek was upset that a neighbor was discussing alternative routes with SNG without talking to him.

“Here he is planning a pipeline across my property, and I’m not even at the table,” Peek said.

Peek said he was unable to contact the two other property owners who live nearby. He sent an email to SNG saying as much, and the company then offered to pay Peek the entire amount if he agreed to have the route run solely on his property.

“That was the point when I told them, ‘It’s not about the money, it’s just the fact that one person was involved getting it moved on my property instead of getting it to pass by his house,’” Peek said.

Peek then went to his lawyer, who filed a formal request with FERC to rehear his arguments for why the pipeline should follow the existing easements. That decision is pending.

In his affidavit, Peek said, among other things, the original route “would have effectively eliminated the destruction of thousands of trees, shortened the pipe and more fairly shared the burden of the pipeline easement among the surrounding landowners,” instead of placing it solely on him.

Many factors outside of landowner opposition play into why a portion of a pipeline is rerouted, Fore, with Kinder Morgan, said. What’s key is whether there is a viable alternative, he said.

“It’s not just, ‘move it over there,’ Fore said. “There’s always something, ‘over there.’”

Fore said he is hoping to talk to Peek. Company attorneys have to sign off on that first.

“I hope we can have a discussion about all of this and next steps,” he said.