NYMEX Gas Jumps 9.75% for Week on WV Pipeline Leak, Storage
The front-month October NYMEX natural gas futures contract settled Friday (Sept. 25) at $3.196 per MMBtu, up 28.4 cents, or 9.75%, for the week. That’s a nice week to be long gas. Most of the fireworks came on Thursday, when a leak on TC Energy’s Mountaineer XPress (MXP) pipeline in West Virginia knocked roughly 1.8 Bcf/d of Appalachian takeaway offline and sent futures up 9.06% in a single day, the biggest one-day gain since January (see WV Pipeline Leak Knocks 1.8 Bcf/d Offline, Gas Futures Jump 9.1%). Traders gave back 10.1 cents on Friday after Columbia Gas Transmission said it had found the leak and expected to fix it over the weekend. Even so, the contract ended the week at its highest Friday close since early July. Read More “NYMEX Gas Jumps 9.75% for Week on WV Pipeline Leak, Storage”
On Thursday morning, a natural gas leak at the Saunders Creek Regulator Station near Milton, WV (Cabell County) forced TC Energy’s Columbia Gas Transmission (TCO) to declare “force majeure” on the Mountaineer XPress (MXP) pipeline, one of the biggest Marcellus/Utica takeaway pipes in the region. Starting with today’s gas day (Friday, Sept. 25), the affected segment of MXP is cut to zero capacity until further notice. TCO estimates the hit to firm customers at 1.8 million dekatherms (MMDth) per day, which is roughly 1.8 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) of Appalachian gas that suddenly needs somewhere else to go. Traders noticed. The October NYMEX futures contract settled up 27.4 cents (+9.06%) at $3.297 per MMBtu, the highest in about three months and the biggest one-day gain since January. 
Columbia Gas Transmission (a TC Energy company) has asked federal regulators for permission to permanently walk away from three underground natural gas storage fields straddling the Pennsylvania/West Virginia line near Majorsville — plugging 71 wells, tearing out a compressor station, and abandoning nearly 20 miles of pipe. On September 9, FERC set the clock on its environmental review. If you’re a landowner in Greene or Washington County, PA, or Marshall County, WV, this one lands in your backyard. Here’s the plain-English version of a very technical filing. 
TC Energy issued its second quarter 2026 update on July 30, and the headline numbers were strong: comparable EBITDA of C$2.9 billion, up 12% over 2Q25, and full-year guidance now tracking the upper end of the C$11.6–$11.8 billion range. Nice, but that’s investor stuff. The news that matters for Marcellus/Utica landowners, drillers, and midstreamers is sitting in the project tables — and in a demand forecast TC has now raised two years running. 
Existing pipelines in the Marcellus/Utica region are testing the market for expansion. Two weeks ago, we told you that DT Midstream (50% owner of NEXUS Pipeline) is eyeing the growing AI data center market in northwestern Ohio as a customer for M-U molecules that flow through NEXUS (see 
It took eight years and untold legal fees (on both sides) before a tiny 3.4-mile, 8-inch natural gas pipeline under the Potomac River was finally built and went online in July (see 
TransCanada Corporation, which renamed itself TC Energy in 2019, made a play for and bought out/merged with U.S.-based Columbia Pipeline Group in 2016 (see 
TC Energy, formerly TransCanada, is a huge pipeline company headquartered in Canada. TC owns and operates the Columbia Gas Transmission and Columbia Gulf Transmission pipeline systems in the Marcellus/Utica region. Yesterday, TC announced that it plans to move its regional headquarters from Kanawha City (a neighborhood in Charleston, WV) to downtown Charleston and build a new $60 million building in the process. TC said the existing 110,000-square-foot former CASCI building will be demolished and replaced with a new building, with construction expected to be complete in 2025 and employees moving in by 2026.
Two related pipeline projects in southeast Virginia now have all regulatory approvals in hand, and the projects will soon begin construction. Columbia Gas Transmission (a subsidiary of TC Energy) applied with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to build the Virginia Reliability Project (VRP), which includes two new compressor units and the replacement of existing pipeline. VRP will dig up, replace, and double the size of two sections, or about 48 miles, of the Columbia Gas pipeline between Chesapeake and Petersburg. Williams’ Commonwealth Energy Connector Project will feed VRP by building six miles of new pipeline within Transco’s existing right-of-way in Virginia, expanding a meter station, and building a 30,500-hp electric motor-drive compressor. Both projects received final approval by FERC in November (see 
In August 2022, Columbia Gas Transmission (a subsidiary of TC Energy) filed an application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to build the Virginia Reliability Project (VRP), which includes two new compressor units and the replacement of existing pipeline (see 
We finally have some good news to share concerning Columbia Gas’ project to build a tiny 3.37-mile, 8-inch pipeline under the Potomac River from Maryland to West Virginia. The project, called the Eastern Panhandle Expansion, has been blocked repeatedly by leftwing wackos in Maryland (see 
TransCanada Corporation, which renamed itself TC Energy in 2019, bought out/merged in U.S.-based Columbia Pipeline Group (now Columbia Gas Transmission) in 2016 (see 