Today marks Opening Day for Major League Baseball in the U.S. and the long "retired" Constitution Pipeline project may be vying to get on the field—whether it gets a spot in the Northeast natural gas pipeline lineup remains to be seen. RBN first blogged about the project in Return to Sender back in 2013, detailing the project's plans to deliver 650 MMcf/d of Marcellus gas from Northeast Pennsylvania into upstate New York connecting to Tennessee Gas and Iroquois pipelines. The project was benched in 2020 after regulatory strikeouts and opposition from New York state. But now, with energy costs rising in the Northeast, President Trump is pushing for a revival, arguing that the pipeline could lower heating and electricity costs. In a March 14 meeting, Trump reportedly discussed the project with New York Governor Kathy Hochul, though she has yet to signal any shift in her stance against it.
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Don't Stop Me Now - FERC Actions Helping to Ease the Path Forward for Natural Gas Infrastructure
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) took several steps in June to slash red tape and speed the construction of natural gas projects in the U.S. interstate and export markets. This is the latest in state and federal efforts to reduce the years-long legal battles around energy infrastructure and quicken the development of vital projects such as pipelines and LNG terminals. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll highlight the recent efforts to remake and improve the permitting process.
Personality Crisis - What's Ahead for New England's Power Grid? Is More Gas Part of the Answer?
Two factors — public concern about soaring utility bills and President Trump’s strong opposition to offshore wind — are forcing New England to rethink its once-ambitious plans for a renewables-heavy electric grid and reassess how to meet its power-generation needs in the late 2020s and early 2030s. One possibility would be to expand the region’s access to piped-in natural gas, but midstreamers’ previous efforts to add pipeline capacity were beaten back time and again. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss New England’s ongoing debate about what to do next.
You Say You Want a Constitution - Can Gas-Pipe Projects Through New York Be Revived?
The vast majority of the incremental natural gas pipeline capacity out of the Marcellus/Utica production area in recent years is designed to transport gas to either the Midwest, the Gulf Coast or the Southeast. Advancing these projects to construction and operation hasn’t always been easy, but generally speaking, most of the new pipelines and pipeline reversals have come online close to when their developers had planned. In contrast, efforts to build new gas pipelines into nearby New York State — a big market and the gateway to gas-starved New England — have hit one brick wall after another. At least until lately. In the past few weeks, one federal court ruling breathed new life into National Fuel Gas’s long-planned Northern Access Pipeline and another gave proponents of the proposed Constitution Pipeline hope that their project may finally be able to proceed. Today, we consider recent legal developments that may at long last enable new, New York-bound outlets for Marcellus/Utica gas to be built.
