Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Enbridge | Energy Services | Industrywide Issues | Pipelines | Regulation
Mass. Gov. Who Bragged About Killing Pipelines Now Wants One, Fast
Back in 2022, then-Massachusetts Attorney General (now Governor) Maura Healey hit the campaign trail and bragged, “I stopped two gas pipelines from coming into this state” (see Mass. Gov. Again Changes Story re Blocking Two NatGas Pipelines). Fast forward four and a half years. Healey is running for reelection in a race where the No. 1 issue is sky-high energy bills. So what does she do? She writes a letter to President Trump’s Energy Secretary, Chris Wright, asking the feds to hurry up and approve a natural gas pipeline expansion into Massachusetts. You can’t make this stuff up. Read More “Mass. Gov. Who Bragged About Killing Pipelines Now Wants One, Fast”
Back in August, we told you FERC had approved Kinder Morgan’s $5.2 billion pair of Southeast pipeline projects, and we told you to expect Big Green to come after it (see 
Five weeks. Same number. The Marcellus/Utica held at 33 rigs again for the week ended October 2, while the national count finally blinked, slipping by one to 598 after three straight weekly gains. Oil rigs up one. Gas rigs down two. Frac spreads inched up again. And the bad news on the price board: natural gas futures gave back last week’s gains, sliding back under $3 to around $2.92 per MMBtu. But the Enverus permit list had a surprise for us, and it’s a good one. 
Last month we told you DTE Energy was about to ask Michigan regulators for permission to build two new natural gas-fired power plants totaling 2,100 megawatts (MW) (see 
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 
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. 
Boardwalk Pipelines’ Kosciusko Junction Pipeline Project, a 111-mile, 36-inch pipe across Mississippi that will carry Marcellus/Utica gas (and gas from other plays) to Southeast markets, now has all the federal permits it needs. FERC voted to approve the project at its Sept. 10 open meeting. On Sept. 23, the Federal Permitting Council announced that all federal permitting was finished. What’s next? Shovels. Boardwalk’s plan on file with FERC calls for construction to begin in December, about 10 weeks from now, with first gas flowing as early as April 2028. 
Kinder Morgan has a new pipeline project in the works, one MDN has not told you about before, because until yesterday nobody outside the company had heard of it. It’s called the Southeast Connector, and it would run north to south across Middle Tennessee through 10 counties, stitching together two of Kinder’s biggest interstate systems: Tennessee Gas Pipeline (TGP) and Southern Natural Gas (SNG). Kinder VP Allen Fore made the rounds in DeKalb County on Thursday, meeting the county mayor, the Chamber of Commerce, and local media. Land agents may start knocking on doors as early as next week. Target in-service: 2029. 
When Appalachian gas prices fall into the basement, EQT turns down the valves, and CEO Toby Rice says the strategy is paying off. In an interview with Reuters on Tuesday, Rice put a dollar figure on it for the first time: a little over $200 million a year in benefit from selling less gas when prices are low and more when they’re high. He also said EQT, the country’s No. 2 gas producer, will pump more gas in 2026 than last year while spending less to do it. Rice talked up the company’s proposed POWER Pipeline to Ohio, its Mountain Valley Pipeline expansions, and a new 10-year LNG supply deal with Lithuania. His outlook for global gas demand is, let’s say, very bullish. 
Here’s one you don’t see every day. The North Carolina Utilities Commission (NCUC) has said “no” to a Duke Energy gas-fired power plant. On Sept. 18, the commission voted 3-1 to deny Duke Energy Progress a certificate of public convenience and necessity (CPCN, the state’s permission slip to build) for a 255-megawatt (MW) gas-fired “peaker” turbine at the Smith Energy Complex in Richmond County. Price tag: $584 million. The twist? The three commissioners who voted no are all Republican appointees, and the lone vote in favor came from a Democrat. Nobody on the commission said gas is the problem. The problem, they said, is data centers: how much of this plant’s power data centers will use, and who would pay for it. 
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.