Williams 2Q: Summer Heat + LNG = High Activity on Transco Pipe
Williams CEO Alan Armstrong was jazzed on yesterday’s second quarter update call with analysts. Armstrong said, “We continue to see strong fundamentals driving a great pipeline of growth opportunities, particularly increasing demand for U.S. LNG exports and power generation along the Transco corridor.” The mighty Transco pipeline (Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line) is a 10,000-mile pipeline network with a mainline extending approximately 1,800 miles between South Texas and New York City. Most of the gas flowing through Transco comes from the Marcellus/Utica. Net income for Williams was $484 million in 2Q22, up 48% from 2Q21. A big focus for Williams in the near term will be new gas gathering projects in the Marcellus region.
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In addition to issuing its second quarter update yesterday, Williams made a second announcement of interest. The company has invested an unspecified amount of money in Aurora Hydrogen, a company developing technology that converts natural gas to hydrogen with zero carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Several other companies, including Chevron and Shell, invested too.
In October 2020, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) finally, after months of dithering, approved TC Energy to begin construction on its Louisiana XPress project to beef up flows along the existing Columbia pipeline system by an additional 850 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) by adding three new compressor stations and expanding a fourth compressor in Louisiana (see 
We were excited to see a Reuters article with the headline, “U.S. pipeline companies eye nat gas infrastructure for growth.” Cool. More pipelines means more opportunity to sell product. And maybe it means there’s a change in attitude coming to allow more pipelines, right? Wrong–at least for the Marcellus/Utica. The article (below) does talk about some of the largest pipeline companies in the U.S., including Kinder Morgan, refocusing on LNG and exports. However, as the article points out, anywhere outside of Texas and possibly Louisiana, *nobody* is planning new pipeline projects. Why? Due to extreme resistance from the left and the current administration in Washington, D.C.
There is a very dangerous thing happening across the country. If you happen to have an opinion, a viewpoint, that’s different from the socialist left–and if you want to express that opinion in social media, via paid ads, etc., the left wants it shut down, calling it “dangerous.” You see, the socialist left can’t compete in the marketplace of free and open ideas and tolerance. Leftists are the most intolerant among us. Case in point: the group Natural Allies for a Clean Energy Future (founded in 2010) promotes information about the useful role of natural gas and the pipelines that flow it–and those ads target (among others) black and Latino voters. The ads are effective, so the socialist left is attempting to shut them down–kill free speech.
Pipeline giant Kinder Morgan (KM) issued its second quarter update and held a conference call on Wednesday with analysts. Kinder’s upper management had some VERY interesting things to say about LNG and how LNG is driving Kinder’s expansion plans in the coming years. Here’s a fascinating statistic we didn’t know before reading comments by Kinder’s muckety mucks: Roughly half of all the natural gas delivered to the U.S.’s LNG export plants is delivered via Kinder Morgan pipelines.
A few weeks ago, the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia (the D.C. Circuit) sided with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and NEXUS Pipeline against Big Green and the City of Oberlin, OH, in a case that challenged FERC’s right to approve NEXUS based on the pipeline exporting some of its natgas across the Canadian border (see 
Baker Hughes, one of the biggest oilfield services companies on the planet, issued its second quarter earnings update yesterday. The company reported a net loss of $839 million during 2Q, but more than half that number is due to a write-off of its oilfield services business in Russia. What caught our attention was not the company’s financial performance, but the words of its top leaders in describing the near- and long-term future for natural gas. Baker Hughes is VERY bullish on natural gas and natural gas infrastructure (including LNG and pipelines).
A portion of Kinder Morgan’s Tennessee Gas Pipeline (TGP) running through Clermont, PA (in McKean County) exploded and caused a fire in a remote part of the town (wooded area) last Tuesday evening (see 
In March 2019, MDN told you about a new Williams plan to beef up the Transco pipeline in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, to deliver an extra 829 MMcf/d (originally 1 billion cubic feet per day) of Marcellus gas to PA, NJ, and Maryland (see 
The 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project from Wetzel County, WV to Pittsylvania County, VA announced in 2014 was supposed to be completed in 2018 and cost $3.5 billion. The project builder, Equitrans Midstream, now says MVP, which is 94% complete, should be done by the end of 2023 at a staggering cost of $6.6 billion. What happened in between 2014 and today is that Big Green groups, many of which use foreign funding (from countries like Russia) have repeatedly challenged the project. Complicit and colluding judges have placed roadblocks in the way, preventing MVP from finishing. Given the ongoing opposition from the radical left, MVP recently asked FERC to extend the time to complete the project until October 2026, just in case. Comments on MVP’s request to extend the deadline are due by tomorrow.
Ever hear the old saying, “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush?” That seems to be the philosophy for EQT Corporation with respect to the compensation it will receive from Equitrans Midstream’s Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project. Newer readers may not know this, but back in 2018 EQT spun off its pipeline division into a brand new, standalone company, renamed Equitrans Midstream (see 
God help you if you are a midstream company that has to wade through the mountain of federal regulations and codes generated by agencies including the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), and are subject to those agencies’ arbitrary decisions on what they will and won’t enforce. In what amounts to a game of Simon Says, FERC has just fined M3 Ohio Gathering, Utica East Ohio Midstream, and UEOM NGL Pipelines–all three either current or former owners of two tiny NGL pipelines that flow propane and ethane from the Scio (Ohio) fractionation plant–$30,000 for not filling out a particular form over a six-year period. Thirty grand for a paperwork violation. It is, according to lawyers who watch these things, an escalation, an “aggressive expansion of enforcement” on the part of FERC.