Former Philly Mayor & Fla. Congressman (Dems) Join NatGas Group
Natural Allies for a Clean Energy Future is a 501(c)(4) advocacy group launched in August 2020 to promote natural gas as the best solution to support so-called renewable energy and the best solution to lower greenhouse gas emissions. The leftist rag, The Guardian, reported that Natural Allies for a Clean Energy Future has budgeted over $10 million for its advocacy efforts. The efforts include convincing younger, liberal, and non-white audiences that natural gas is clean and green. Is it working? Last year, the group recruited former U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu (Democrat from Louisiana) and earlier this year recruited former Congressman Tim Ryan (Democrat from Ohio) to sit on the group’s “leadership council.” Natural Allies has just recruited two more Democrats as reps–former Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter and former Florida Congressman Kendrick Meek (both African Americans). Is this Democrats-for-hire? Or do all four of these people really believe in a future with natural gas energy?
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Yesterday, Dominion Energy and Enbridge co-announced that Dominion has agreed to sell what we think (not 100% sure) are the remaining natural gas local distribution companies (LDCs) that Dominion owns to Enbridge for $14.0 billion, which includes $9.4 billion in cash plus the assumption of debt. The deal includes three LDCs–The East Ohio Gas Company, Public Service Company of North Carolina, and Questar Gas Company (along with Wexpro Company). The three LDCs serve about 3 million homes and businesses in Ohio, North Carolina, Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho and include 78,000 miles of natural gas distribution, transmission, gathering, and storage pipelines and more than 62 Bcf of working underground and LNG storage capacity. Dominion wants to shed its natgas businesses and focus solely on electrifying everything.
The Weymouth compressor station, online and operating safely since early 2021, was the final piece of the $452 million Atlantic Bridge expansion project that was years in the making. Built by Enbridge, the Weymouth compressor can pump an extra 132,705 Dt/d (132.7 million cubic feet per day) of Marcellus gas through Enbridge’s Algonquin Gas Transmission pipeline from receipt points in New York and New Jersey. The gas is pushed through the mainline all the way to Maine and (potentially) Nova Scotia, Canada. The radical environmental left (which hates all fossil fuels) has been fighting this compressor station for years. On Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia (D.C. Circuit) dismissed two remaining petitions against the project.
Canadian-based Enbridge operates, among many other assets, the Dawn Hub in the Canadian province of Ontario. Located in southwestern Ontario, Dawn, with 288 Bcf (billion cubic feet) of gas storage, provides shippers with direct access to North America’s major supply basins–including the Utica and the Marcellus. The Dawn Hub is connected to a myriad of pipelines, including Rover and NEXUS (from the M-U region). The new news is that Enbridge has just launched an open season to expand capacity along the pipeline that runs from Dawn to both the Kirkwall and Parkway hubs near Toronto.
In our daily perusal of press releases, we spotted an announcement from Yara and Enbridge about a joint venture to build a “world scale” low-carbon blue ammonia project along the Gulf Coast near Corpus Christi, Texas. We thought, “Hmmm, that’s interesting.” But as we read the announcement, our eyes got wide when they landed on this statement: “Enbridge’s Texas Eastern Transmission Pipeline is expected to provide the transportation service for feed gas that will be used for the production process.” Whoa! Now that’s REALLY interesting! We’ll tell you why…
Just over one year ago, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) voted to keep the Weymouth compressor, the final piece of the $452 million Atlantic Bridge expansion project that was years in the making, up and running (see 
Here’s a question: What are the 15 biggest (by company revenue) natural gas-owning pipeline companies in the world? The U.S. has the biggest natural gas pipeline infrastructure in the world, covering a distance of 333,000 kilometers (206,917 miles). Even so, only one U.S.-based company is in the top 5 biggest pipeline companies. Can you guess which country takes the top 2 spots on the list?
EQT Corporation, the largest producer of natural gas in the U.S, has cut a deal to send 15 petajoules (PJ) of RSG (responsibly sourced gas) from the Marcellus/Utica to Canada’s largest natural gas distribution company, Enbridge Gas, over the next 12 months. This is a major deal. Running the numbers, 15 petajoules works out to be roughly 14 billion cubic feet (Bcf) of Marcellus/Utica gas.
Yesterday, the Ohio Chamber of Commerce held its “Energy Supply Chain: Present & Future” conference at the Ohio Statehouse Atrium in Columbus. Participants and speakers included oil and natural gas producers, pipeline operators, policymakers, renewable companies, and more. Questions largely centered on the energy transition and how various resources fit into a so-called sustainable future. The upshot was that Ohio’s natural gas (mostly Utica, some Marcellus) is front and center as a driving force for Ohio energy, and the Ohio economy.
Last year Big Green lobbyists using the City of Oberlin, Ohio contested the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) decision to approve the Enbridge/DTE Energy NEXUS pipeline, a $2 billion, 255-mile pipeline from the Ohio Utica Shale into Michigan that’s been flowing for years connecting to a pipeline that exports some of the gas into Canada (see 
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federally-owned electric utility corporation in the U.S. TVA’s service area covers all of Tennessee, portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, and small areas of Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia. TVA is the sixth-largest power supplier and the largest public utility in the country. One year ago MDN told you that TVA is spending over $1 billion to replace six coal-fired plants with natgas-fired turbines (see 
As part of its fourth-quarter and full-year 2021 update, Canadian pipeline giant Enbridge (with huge assets in the U.S., including in the Marcellus/Utica) announced it is spending $400 million to expand capacity on its Texas Eastern Pipeline Company (TETCO) system. Enbridge will also spend an additional $100 million on TETCO for the newly-announced Appalachia to Market Phase II expansion. That’s half a billion dollars on TETCO spending beginning this year. TETCO currently flows roughly 1.9 Bcf/d of Marcellus/Utica molecules with the power to influence gas prices (see 
New England–Massachusetts and Maine in particular–dodged a major bullet on Thursday when Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) commissioners voted 5-0 to NOT overturn a permit for the already up-and-running compressor station in Weymouth, Mass. The Weymouth compressor station was the final piece of the $452 million Atlantic Bridge expansion project that was years in the making. The compressor went online in January 2021 (see