Two 10-foot sections of 42-inch diameter pipe will provide students at Rockingham Community College with an opportunity to practice their welding skills.
The two sections, donated by Mountain Valley Pipeline, LLC, were delivered in October to the campus in Wentworth, North Carolina, where welding program director Wendy Young coordinated the unloading and storage of the 3,900-pound pipe sections.
“We’ve got a lot of students who want to be pipeline welders,” Young said. The pipe from Mountain Valley will give students valuable experience in cutting and welding large diameter steel pipe, she said.
The recent expansion of Rockingham Community College’s Industrial Technologies II building included the purchase of new welding equipment and allowed the college to more than double student capacity, with 48 students enrolled in the fall 2024 semester.
The donated pipe sections were unused from the MVP project, a 303-mile underground interstate natural gas transmission pipeline that entered service in June 2024. Mountain Valley previously contributed pipe sections to the Pittsylvania Career & Technical Center in Pittsylvania County, Virginia.
Since 2018, when Mountain Valley announced the MVP Southgate project to bring a needed supply of natural gas to North Carolina, the company has contributed more than $500,000 in grants, scholarships and in-kind donations to support community activities and efforts related to education, safety and economic growth in North Carolina and Virginia.
