Expansion of MVP Takes Another Step Forward

When it comes to midstream development in the Northeast, Appalachian natural gas producers have learned by now not to hold their breath. The region is notorious for its staunch environmental opposition to hydrocarbon infrastructure and its propensity for sending gas pipeline projects to the trash pile. Against all odds, however, midstream development in the region has thawed in recent months, in large part spurred by the unlikely advancement of Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), the long-embattled project to move up to 2 Bcf/d from the Appalachia gas supply basin to the Transco Corridor, which runs north-south along the Eastern Seaboard. In today’s RBN blog, we take a look at historical flows on Williams’s Transco Pipeline and what they can tell us about how MVP and Transco’s own planned expansions might reshape gas flows along the corridor. 

After a decade of regulatory and legal challenges, Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) finally came into service in the middle of last year. The 2-Bcf/d pipeline — soon to be expanded to 2.5 Bcf/d via additional compression — was designed to ease natural gas takeaway constraints out of the Marcellus/Utica and help production there break past its current plateau near 36 Bcf/d, but bottlenecks on the massive Transco Pipeline have complicated matters. In today’s RBN blog, we look at efforts to unleash more Appalachian gas in the domestic market, focusing on the Southside Reliability Enhancement Project (SREP), which has enabled more gas to reach North Carolina. 

Appalachian natural gas producers got good news earlier this month: Williams announced it was moving forward with the Southeast Supply Enhancement project, a large-scale expansion of southbound capacity out of the Northeast on its Transco Pipeline system. Not only that, but it super-sized the project to 1.4 Bcf/d of capacity — nearly double the 800 MMcf/d it had offered in an open season held this summer. The project is one of several brownfield expansions planned to provide additional supply access in Transco’s premium Zone 5 market area, which runs through Virginia and North Carolina — and the first large-scale takeaway expansion to be announced in the area since the long-delayed Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) was cleared for completion following years of regulatory and legal hurdles. In today’s RBN blog, we provide the latest on the Transco Corridor expansions.