intrastate

Fundamental, far-reaching changes in natural gas pipeline flows within the Lone Star State to enable increased gas supplies to reach LNG terminals and Mexico cross-border points give new significance to the issue of federal versus state pipeline regulation. Given Texas’s independent streak, it comes as no surprise that federal and state rules are night-and-day, with the Texas regs being largely hands-off and the feds’ being very hands-on. The differences are worth examining because they affect project development, pipeline tariffs, relationships between pipeline owner/operations and gas sellers/buyers—even the degree of transparency regarding shipper contracts and daily pipeline flows. Today we consider the differences between federal and state regulatory oversight of gas pipelines in Texas, and why they matter.

Handling the flood of Marcellus/Utica gas headed to Gulf Coast LNG export terminals and to Mexico will require pipeline reversals and expansions, new pipe and a coordination of interstate and intrastate pipeline capacity. That’s a tall order in itself, but there’s more: Texas’s intrastate pipelines operate under an entirely different set of regulations than their interstate counterparts––different rules on pipeline tariff rates, pipeline rules, permitting, eminent domain, you name it. In today’s blog we continue our look at developmental history of the Lone Star State’s two gas pipeline systems––one regulated in Washington, DC and the other in Austin––and how it may affect the transformation of the overall natural gas transportation grid.

Texas’s vast natural gas pipeline network is undergoing a major transformation to enable gas from the Marcellus/Utica shale plays to flood south/southwest into and through Texas to LNG export terminals and to Mexico. To grasp the complexity of the task at hand, it is critically important to understand how Texas’s “spaghetti bowl” of interstate and intrastate pipeline systems evolved in parallel but under very different regulatory constructs, and with the intention of serving very different market needs. In today’s blog, we begin an examination of the state’s two pipeline systems––one regulated by the Feds in Washington, DC and the other by the Texas Railroad Commission in Austin, TX––and why the intrastate system has taken on a new significance for U.S. natural gas markets.