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Full Speed Ahead on Building TVA Cumberland Gas-Fired Plant & Pipe
Here’s an important update for a project we haven’t discussed since last October. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is building a $2.1 billion state-of-the-art natural gas plant in Cumberland City, Tennessee (see TVA Recommends Replacing Cumberland Coal Plant w/Natural Gas). There have been bumps and hiccups along the way, but the good news is that the plant is on track to finish construction *early* — by September 2026, instead of the target date of December 2026. Here’s an important update on the project… Read More “Full Speed Ahead on Building TVA Cumberland Gas-Fired Plant & Pipe”
A pipeline court case to celebrate (we take our victories where we can find them). Washington Gas Light Company (WGL) seeks to install a 24-inch-diameter high-pressure natural gas pipeline through the Pimmit Hills neighborhood in Fairfax County, Virginia. Fairfax County is a suburb of Washington, D.C. The County Zoning Board of Appeals claimed the project needs a “special exemption” issued by the County Board of Supervisors (nine of the Supervisors are Democrats, one is a Republican). The Court of Appeals for Virginia knocked that bogus claim down. 
We still marvel, to this day, at how Tallgrass Energy Partners turned what looked like a financial disaster into an economic bonanza. Tallgrass built the Rockies Express (REX) pipeline, which stretches from Colorado and Wyoming to Ohio, just in time for the shale revolution to take hold. Whoops! Talk about bad timing! A significant portion of REX, its Zone 3 pipeline from Missouri to Ohio, was in danger of drying up in 2012 due to the increase in Marcellus/Utica gas production (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 April 2017, MDN brought you the news that Columbia Pipeline (owned by TransCanada) had applied with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to build a pipeline under the Potomac to connect natural gas from Pennsylvania to the Mountaineer Gas system in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia (see 
Chesapeake Utilities Corporation, not to be confused with the former Chesapeake Energy Corporation (which is now Expand Energy), announced that its Ohio subsidiary, Aspire Energy Express, LLC, has entered into an agreement with American Electric Power (AEP) to construct and operate an intrastate natural gas pipeline in central Ohio to feed Marcellus/Utica gas to a new fuel-cell facility, which will provide on-site electric power to a data center. The pipeline is expected to cost approximately $10 million to construct. 
In what appears to be an innocuous, brief press release, DT Midstream (DTM), headquartered in Detroit, which owns significant assets in the Marcellus/Utica region and other regions, including the Haynesville, delivered what we consider big news. DTM has achieved an investment-grade rating with all three major credit rating agencies: Fitch Ratings, Moody’s Ratings, and S&P Global Ratings. While this announcement may seem minor, we can assure you, it’s a big deal. 
The lawfare battle brought by radical green groups in New Jersey, including Food and Water Watch, the NJ Highlands Coalition, and the Sierra Club, aimed at overturning the decision to permit and build an electric compressor station and a pipeline that connects to it, is over. Done. Finished. Can we please stick a fork in it? We’re talking about the battle to block a compressor project in West Milford, NJ, part of Kinder Morgan’s Tennessee Gas Pipeline (TGP) East 300 expansion project, an upgrade of TGP to deliver an extra 115 MMcf/d of natural gas to Consolidated Edison and its customers in New York City and surrounding suburbs. The radicals just flamed out in a NJ appeals court and have no options left to challenge it. 
We hate to see internal fighting and bickering within the oil and gas industry. We (as an industry) have a hard enough time battling the crazies of the environmental left. Yet infighting has erupted over a plan to run a pipeline to a proposed gas-fired power plant in South Carolina. In February 2024, the South Carolina Public Service Commission approved a proposed project to build a 1,020-megawatt (MW) gas-fired power plant in the state’s Lowcountry, in Colleton County (see 
We are finally seeing a return to sanity and real science following four years of out-of-control edicts during the Biden autopen administration. (The old fool likely didn’t even know a tenth of the things signed under his name.) On Monday, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), along with the Departments of Agriculture, Energy, the Interior, and Transportation, revised regulations to eliminate all references to considering climate change, environmental justice, and other so-called environmental issues in their permit reviews. The left under Biden had introduced such nonsense in a bid to block new fossil energy projects. No more! The pendulum has swung back to the common-sense middle. 
We’ve pointed out (for years) the relative success the anti-drilling left has had in blocking new pipeline projects to carry Marcellus/Utica molecules to other regions, stifling new drilling in our area as a result. Although it has been and will continue to be a challenge to build new pipeline projects, the Trump administration is making it easier. Trump’s policies encourage new pipelines and more access to natural gas. We spotted an article from Reuters that provides an overview of eight pipeline projects that are actively being pursued to carry M-U molecules to other regions. We’ve covered all of these projects in previous posts. The Reuters article compiles the most likely candidates for new pipeline projects into a single, convenient article. 
Following President Trump’s quid pro quo deal with New York Governor Kathy Hochul in which Trump is allowing a $5 billion offshore wind project to proceed in return for Hochul allowing two Williams gas pipeline projects, Williams wasted no time in restarting one of the two projects, the Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) project (see 
A new poll of registered Massachusetts voters shows they are fed up with the liberal policies of the Democrats running the state when it comes to the sky-high cost of energy. Natural gas prices have increased 93 percent over the last decade, while electricity costs have risen 65 percent. For many families, energy bills now consume a disproportionate share of household income. Massachusetts households paid 76.34 percent more than the U.S. average for electricity and 71.45 percent more than the national average for natural gas. The poll showed nearly 6 in 10 voters (59 percent) support building the Constitution Pipeline, which would deliver affordable natural gas from Pennsylvania to New England. Another 28 percent are neutral or have no opinion on the Constitution. Only a tiny 13 percent are against building the Constitution Pipeline. 
Ever so gradually, pipeline capacity to transport Marcellus/Utica molecules to other markets, particularly the Deep South, has been increasing. And it continues to grow, gradually. Two projects from Kinder Morgan aim to help that effort. The 2.1-Bcf/d Mississippi Crossing (MSX) and 1.3-Bcf/d South System Expansion 4 (SSE4) projects will move more Marcellus/Utica gas into Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. RBN Energy connects the dots. 
Last week, MDN told you that EQT’s vice president of midstream, Robert Wingo, was moving on to another job (see