What We Will Be Talking About In February, 2014

This is why I love to blog.

A couple of weeks ago a reader sent me a short note explaining that my lumping together of the entire northeast was a mistake. With regard to natural gas, NYC is in very, very good shape. That cannot be said for Boston, or New England in general.

Coincidentally, then, today, RBN Energy begins a 3-part series on natural gas to NYC and New England.

Today, part 1, looks at NYC. It begins:

The hopes of Marcellus gas suppliers to move more of their product east are playing out in very different ways in metropolitan New York City and in New England. New pipelines to deliver gas from Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio to the Big Apple and its environs already are installed and operating, easing the metro area’s supply crunch and shrinking regional price “basis”. But plans to expand gas-transmission capacity to New England are stalled, and some gas users there are facing another potentially supply-constrained expensive winter. Today we begin a new series looking at why—for the foreseeable future at least--it’s better to be a gas user in New York City than Boston. 

Since November (2013) several major pipeline projects serving northern New Jersey and New York City have become operational, together providing a roughly one-third increase in the volume of Marcellus and other gas that can be delivered to the metro area. And it’s the supply from Marcellus that opened up the most.

The new pipelines:

• Williams Partners LP on November 1, 2013,  placed into service the remaining 125,000 dth/d of capacity added by its $390 million Northeast Supply Link;
• Kinder Morgan’s completed the Tennessee Northeast Upgrade project. Kinder Morgan on November 1, 2013, added 636 M dth/d of capacity to the Tennessee Gas Pipeline’s (TGP) 24-inch-diameter 300 Line; 
• Spectra Energy’s $1.2 billion New Jersey-New York expansion also came online November 1, 2013. The expansion of the Texas Eastern Transmission Co. (TETCO) and Algonquin Gas Transmission pipelines--which involved a 16-mile extension of TETCO’s existing Staten Island line to lower Manhattan, and the replacement of five miles of existing pipeline in New Jersey and New York with larger-diameter pipe — boosted the capacity of gas deliveries to New York City by up to 800 MMcf/d. 

The third project, the Spectra Energy project, roughly doubled the amount of gas that can make its way to the heart of the nation’s largest city.

In Part 2 of this series, RBN Energy will look into the still-stalled effort to move more Marcellus gas into New England [it will be interesting to see why].

And in a third entry, RBN Energy will examine longer-term projects on the drawing board to further expand New Jersey, New York and New England’s access to shale gas from Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio.