W. Kentucky Pipeline Wins in Court, Escapes PSC; Farmers Dig In
The long-stalled Pennyrile Energy Corridor, a 53-mile natural gas pipeline planned for western Kentucky, has racked up two big wins since we last checked in. In September, a Kentucky judge ruled that the agency building the pipeline can use eminent domain to get easements from landowners who won’t sign. State lawmakers also moved the project out from under the state’s utility regulator. But a few farmers along the route aren’t budging, and one calls the $4-per-foot offer for his land “ridiculous.” Read More “W. Kentucky Pipeline Wins in Court, Escapes PSC; Farmers Dig In”
The rest of the country is heading into winter swimming in natural gas. Production is at record highs, storage is above average, and Henry Hub January futures are trading below $4. Yet traders are paying more than $20 per MMBtu for gas delivered into parts of New England in January. That’s more than five times the national benchmark. The problem isn’t a shortage of gas. It’s a shortage of pipe. New England sits just a few hundred miles from the Marcellus Shale, one of the most prolific gas fields on the planet, but more than a decade of blocked pipeline projects means it can’t get enough of our gas when the weather turns cold. 
Here’s a head-scratcher for you. The Henry Hub spot (physical, not futures) price, the national benchmark for natural gas down in Louisiana, closed yesterday at $3.155 per MMBtu (million British thermal units, roughly the same as 1 Mcf, or a thousand cubic feet). Up here in the Marcellus/Utica, the very same molecule of gas sold for 88.5 cents. That’s not a typo. Our gas traded at a $2.27 discount to Henry Hub, fetching just 28 cents on the dollar. Why? The short answer is the same one we’ve given for 15 years: not enough pipelines. 
A coalition of 26 state attorneys general, led by West Virginia AG JB McCuskey, is urging the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to adopt a proposed rule that would let interstate pipelines do bigger upgrades, faster, without FERC’s full project-by-project review. All three Republican AGs in our neck of the woods signed on: West Virginia’s McCuskey, Pennsylvania’s Dave Sunday, and Ohio’s D. Andrew Wilson. The 24-page comment letter, dated Oct. 6, is a point-by-point rebuttal to a blue-state coalition (New York, Maryland, Massachusetts, California, and friends) that wants FERC to scrap the whole idea. It’s a wonky fight over a wonky program, but it matters a great deal to drillers, pipeline companies, and royalty owners in the Marcellus/Utica. 
The 108-mile “Women’s Water Walk” along the route of the proposed Constitution Pipeline wrapped up last Sunday in Schoharie. On Tuesday, the walkers carried jars of creek water to Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office in Albany. The walk is over, but it didn’t end quietly. It gave birth to a new, permanent anti-pipeline coalition run by Frack Action. The Governor’s office answered with a carefully worded statement that isn’t quite the “stand strong” pledge the walkers came for. And the walk’s fundraising came up about 80% short of its goal. 
Here’s one you don’t see every day. A Democratic polling firm, one that boasts of helping elect Democrats all the way up to the White House, says a majority of New York voters want the Constitution Pipeline built. And it isn’t close on natural gas itself: roughly three out of four New Yorkers support using natural gas in the Empire State. Somebody, please forward this to Food & Water Watch, which has been telling anyone who will listen that the “overwhelming majority” of New Yorkers oppose Constitution. Before we pop the champagne, though, there’s some fine print you need to see, including the question of who paid for this poll. 
Remember all those years of protesters chaining themselves to equipment, lawsuits by the dozen, and court-ordered work stoppages trying to kill the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP)? Here’s what West Virginians got for finally building it: a fat new check. A new report from West Virginia State Treasurer Larry Pack’s office finds that MVP drove a 62% jump in the value of rural utility property in the 11 counties it crosses, generating nearly $27.1 million in new property tax revenue in a single year—about $9.1 million for county commissions and nearly $18 million for local schools. MVP-related utility property accounted for more than 86% of ALL the growth in property tax revenue in those counties. One pipeline. Eighty-six percent. 
Four U.S. senators—two Republicans, two Democrats—released the final text last Wednesday of a major bipartisan permitting reform bill called the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026. It’s 417 pages long, and buried in it are some of the most pipeline-friendly provisions we’ve seen come out of Congress in years: a 150-day deadline to file lawsuits, a nine-month cap on state water permit reviews for interstate gas pipelines, and a free pass from NEPA review for compressor stations and looping built inside existing pipeline rights-of-way. The catch? It has to clear the Senate (60 votes) AND the House during the lame-duck session after the Nov. 3 elections. The clock is ticking. 
Back in July, we told you Tennessee Gas Pipeline (TGP), a Kinder Morgan subsidiary, had launched a non-binding open season for its 219 South Project (see 
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 
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 
Washington came to Erie last week with one message for 
Here’s a number that should make every Marcellus/Utica landowner and driller wince: $1.590. That’s what gas at the Tennessee Zone 4 Marcellus hub is fetching for October delivery, according to NGI’s Forward Look. Meanwhile, down in Florida, the very same molecule (quite possibly gas that started life in a Pennsylvania or West Virginia well) is priced at $3.960 for October. That’s a $2.37 gap, which means Florida buyers are paying 2.49 times what our local hubs get. The culprit? Not enough pipe heading south. And this week, one of the few big southbound pipes we do have, Mountaineer XPress, sprang a leak.