Locator: 50979INFRASTRUCTURE.
Somehow there seems to be a connection between the above and the below:
Demand for natural gas is rising both within the U.S. Northeast and in regions to its south and west. That incremental demand is spurring the development of a host of gas pipeline projects — small, medium and large — that collectively will enable Marcellus/Utica E&Ps to ratchet up their production year by year well into the 2030s. In today’s RBN blog, we continue our analysis of the new pipelines and pipeline expansions being planned to move more gas within — and out of — the U.S.’s largest gas production region.
This is the fourth blog in a series about gas market dynamics in the Northeast. In Part 1, we said that while the dramatic changes happening in Texas and Louisiana have garnered the most attention in the past year or two, the Appalachia market has been quietly evolving in ways that will not only shift flow patterns within the region but also affect flows to the Southeast, Midwest and Gulf Coast. Part 2 focused on gas demand within the Northeast, which is getting a big boost from the power-generation sector as coal retirements continue and data center development proliferates. In Part 3, we started a review of the pipeline projects being planned to enable more gas to flow through and out of the Marcellus/Utica to existing and new demand centers, focusing on projects in New England and New York.
Today, we continue that review. There’s no simple way to categorize most of the remaining projects. The best we can do is separate them into these five buckets: (1) projects within Pennsylvania; (2) regionwide enhancements; (3) projects tied to Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) and Transco; (4) expanded capacity to Ohio and beyond; and (5) projects that are more distant but still related to the Marcellus/Utica.
Projects within Pennsylvania
We’ll start with National Fuel Gas Co. (NFG), which is building two gas pipeline projects in the Keystone State and planning another. NFG is not familiar to everyone, so we should note that it is an integrated energy company that produces natural gas in north-central and northwestern Pennsylvania, owns and operates a gas pipeline network — National Fuel Gas Pipeline (NFGP; lime-green lines in Figure 1 below) — and the Empire Pipeline (magenta lines) and distributes gas to retail customers in northwestern Pennsylvania and western New York.
