Antero Midstream 3Q: Curtailments Stall Growth, Big Plans for 2027
Antero Midstream (AM), the pipeline and water company that serves Antero Resources, finally got paid. In 3Q26, AM collected about $377 million from Veolia Water Technologies, ending a six-year court fight over the failed Clearwater wastewater plant. AM used the money to cut its debt by more than $400 million and pay off its 2028 notes early. The legal win more than tripled 3Q net income. But AM’s day-to-day business barely grew from 2Q, because Antero Resources shut in gas to avoid selling it at bargain-basement prices. AM says 4Q will be a record anyway, and it’s lining up “several billion dollars in potential projects,” including a brand-new North-South pipeline to Clarington, Ohio (see New Pipeline Alert: Antero Midstream Targets Clarington, Ohio Hub). Read More “Antero Midstream 3Q: Curtailments Stall Growth, Big Plans for 2027”
Enterprise Products Partners (EPD), the Houston midstream giant that owns ATEX, the 1,230-mile pipeline carrying Marcellus/Utica ethane to Mont Belvieu, TX, reported a blowout third quarter on Thursday. But the part of the earnings call that matters most to M-U drillers and landowners came during Q&A. An analyst asked whether the pending EQT-Range combination changes the math on ATEX recontracting. Enterprise’s answer: not really, but the next round of contracts will be priced for “today’s market.” Translation: the rate reset we told you about in August is still coming. 
DT Midstream (DTM), the Detroit-based midstream company that gathers Marcellus/Utica gas in northeastern and southwestern Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio, released its third-quarter 2026 update on Thursday. The headline for our neck of the woods: Northeast gathering volumes slipped about 9% from the second quarter, to 1.25 Bcf/d (billion cubic feet per day), and DTM says they’ll drop again in the fourth quarter because drillers are curtailing (holding back) production while prices are weak. The longer-term picture is much brighter. DTM is taking bids on another expansion of Millennium Pipeline into the New York market, signing 20-year deals to move Appalachian gas to Indiana power plants, and talking about a bigger NEXUS Pipeline down the road. 
Millennium Pipeline, the pipe that carries northeast Marcellus gas across New York’s Southern Tier, is taking bids on a new expansion called the Ramapo Enhancement Project (REP). The binding open season runs through Nov. 13. Millennium is offering up to 60,000 dekatherms per day (Dth/d) of new firm capacity, roughly 58 MMcf/d (million cubic feet per day). The gas would move from the Stagecoach storage hub on the PA-NY border to the Algonquin pipeline at Ramapo, NY, which serves the New York City area and New England. Service would start Nov. 1, 2028. It’s a modest project, but it’s a new pipeline expansion into New York. Pinch us. 
Last week, the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit said “no thanks” to Williams’ request to reconsider its September ruling that tossed out New Jersey’s water permit for the Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) pipeline project. The October 22 order (embedded below) means NESE’s New Jersey water quality certification (WQC) stays vacated (i.e., canceled), and the whole matter goes back to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) for a do-over. And here’s what caught our eye: Williams no longer says the ruling won’t affect its schedule. In its rehearing petition, the company admitted the loss “will delay construction” in New Jersey and could jeopardize NESE’s November 1, 2027 in-service date. So what happens now? Let’s walk through it. 
National Fuel Gas (NFG) is laying more pipe in Tioga County. Its gathering subsidiary, NFG Midstream Covington, has asked the PA Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) for a stream-and-wetland crossing permit for two natural gas pipelines, 24-inch and 20-inch, running side by side through Farmington, Deerfield, and Chatham townships. The notice also mentions a 16-inch water line. The filing comes just 10 days after NFG’s board approved splitting the company in two, and it strongly suggests NFG’s Seneca Resources drilling arm is gearing up for more Utica production in Tioga County. 
Eight weeks. Same number. The Marcellus/Utica held at 33 rigs yet again for the week ended October 23, and this time the national count joined the party, holding at 603 for a third straight week. Underneath that flat national total, oil rigs added one and gas rigs lost one. Frac spreads slipped by five, a second straight weekly drop. On the price board, the gap between oil and gas went from wide to ridiculous: WTI climbed to settle at $103.27 a barrel, while natural gas tumbled 15% for the week to roughly $2.64 per MMBtu. And new this week: MDN’s Marcellus/Utica Rigs by County, a county-by-county map in table form showing exactly where all 33 of our rigs are drilling, which will now be a regular part of this weekly update. (Spoiler: Susquehanna County is at zero.) Plus: Antero takes over the top spot on the Enverus permit list, and National Fuel Gas shows up on the rig list. 
Back in April, MDN told you about Enbridge’s ~$300 million job to move the natural gas lines that hang off the Bourne and Sagamore bridges and run them under the Cape Cod Canal instead (see 
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. 
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 
Halliburton, one of the two or three biggest frac providers working in the Marcellus/Utica, reported its third-quarter 2026 results yesterday. Most of the financial press focused on Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and a rosy 2027 forecast. The part M-U drillers (and the folks who supply them) should care about came out during the earnings call. Frac crews are getting scarce, customers are lining up for next year, and Halliburton is raising its prices. If you drill wells in Appalachia, your 2027 completion budget may need a bigger number in it.