Kinder Morgan Greenlights $3.1B Pipe to Flow M-U Gas to Southeast
Kinder Morgan, the country’s biggest natural gas pipeline operator (it moves about 40% of all the gas produced in the U.S.), reported record third-quarter results yesterday. Nice for shareholders. But the real news for MDN readers is buried in the project list. Kinder’s Southern Natural Gas (SNG) unit has made a final investment decision (FID) to build the Southeast Connector, a 2.6 Bcf/d (billion cubic feet per day) pipeline the company says will deliver “abundant Marcellus/Utica supply” to the Southeast. And Kinder’s Tennessee Gas Pipeline (TGP) says its proposed 219 South project, which would also move M-U gas south, drew four times more interest than the capacity it offered. Translation: the South wants our gas, and Kinder is building the straws. Read More “Kinder Morgan Greenlights $3.1B Pipe to Flow M-U Gas to Southeast”
The Homer City Energy Campus in Indiana County, PA — the largest natural gas-fired power plant under construction anywhere in the U.S. — just ticked off a few nice milestones. Construction contractor Kiewit marked one year on the job, the workforce has topped 2,000, and the first of seven giant gas turbines is now sitting on its foundation. Meanwhile, Amazon’s plan to build 36 data centers next door is officially on the county’s review clock; the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) just held a hearing on the plant’s water discharge permit, and the usual suspects are still fighting the plant’s air permit. Here’s where things stand. 
NextEra Energy, the largest electric power company in North America (and parent of Florida Power & Light), reported third-quarter 2026 results yesterday. Adjusted earnings came in at $2.592 billion ($1.24 per share), up 9.7% per share from a year ago. But the real news came during the Q&A with Wall Street analysts. Just two days earlier, Virginia regulators’ own staff recommended denying NextEra’s $67 billion takeover of Dominion Energy as proposed—and Gov. Abigail Spanberger demanded a six-year rate freeze. NextEra CEO John Ketchum didn’t blink, saying he looks forward to “prosecuting this case.” Meanwhile, NextEra keeps going deeper into natural gas: more than 18 gigawatts (GW) of its 20+ GW of data center power projects are gas-fired, including a giant gas plant in Fayette County, PA. And NextEra has spent more than $1 billion this year buying into shale wells. Not bad for a company that once said it was getting out of gas! 
So much for the charm offensive. Five weeks after NextEra Energy and Dominion Energy sweetened their $67 billion merger with bigger bill credits, 1,000 new jobs and a shiny new Richmond office tower (see 
One year ago today, we told you construction had started on Enbridge’s 122-mile Ridgeline Expansion Project in Tennessee (see 
The Upper Burrell Township (Westmoreland County, PA) Planning Commission voted 5-0 Tuesday night to recommend the township’s data center ordinance, handing it to the three township supervisors. The supervisors hold a public hearing at 6 p.m. tonight (Oct. 22), followed by a special meeting to consider adopting it. They’re racing the clock: the township’s data center moratorium expires Nov. 2, just 11 days from now. Last month we told you the draft quietly requires every new data center to make its own around-the-clock (“baseload”) power, which in southwest Pennsylvania means natural gas. As best we can tell, that requirement survived. 
DNV, the Norway-based testing, certification, and risk management company, recently released its 10th annual Energy Transition Outlook (ETO). MDN has written about these outlooks before, and they usually read like a slow-motion obituary for fossil fuels. Not so much this year, at least for natural gas. DNV raised its long-term forecast for global gas demand, flipped its forecast for North American gas production from decline to growth, and says the U.S. and Canada are now the world’s biggest gas exporters, “the first time in the modern LNG era.” DNV still predicts gas will lose most of its role in power generation by mid-century, which we take issue with below. 
OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Natural gas turbines at Sterling data center could power down in 2028; D.C. and Commanders rule out power plant, but confirm natural gas use for new stadium; NATIONAL: U.S. natural gas futures fall on mild near-term weather outlook; Natural gas price forecast – channel breakdown signals deeper decline; Those who oppose data centers will someday regret their short-sighted choices; INTERNATIONAL: Oil gains after Saudi oil field attack; Macron says France to get LNG supplies from Qatar in winter.