US Northeast to See Record Pipe Build in 2018
The US northeast will see a record amount of new pipeline capacity added in 2018 to take growing Appalachian gas production to markets, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) said May 18.
By the end of this year, the EIA said in its Today in Energy report, an estimated 23bn ft3/day of pipeline capacity will be online out of the northeast, up from about 16.7bn ft3/day at the end of 2017 and more than three times the amount of takeaway capacity available in 2014.
“The growth of natural gas production in the Marcellus and Utica basins of Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia is constrained by the lack of available takeaway pipeline capacity to move it to new markets,” the EIA said. “As new pipeline projects come online, they will create an outlet for new production, providing natural gas to demand markets in the Midwest, the southeast, eastern Canada and the Gulf Coast.”
Most of the new capacity slated to come online this year is associated with four major interstate pipelines: Columbia Pipeline Group, Transcontinental Gas Pipeline (Transco), Rover Pipeline and Nexus Pipeline.
Columbia has two projects that will add 4.2bn ft3/day: Leach XPress, which entered service on January 1 providing 1.5bn ft3/day out of West Virginia and Ohio, and Mountaineer XPress, which will enter service late this year and add another 2.7bn ft3/day of capacity out of West Virginia.
Another Columbia expansion, the WB XPress project, will add 1.3bn ft3/day of mainline capacity, also late this year.
On the Transco system, the bi-directional Atlantic Sunrise project (the first phase of which entered service in 2017) will provide 1.5bn ft3/day of capacity out of Pennsylvania and West Virginia. The Mountain Valley Pipeline will provide 2bn ft3/day of capacity from West Virginia to the Transco system in southern Virginia, while the Equitrans Expansion Project will add 600mn ft3/day of capacity from northwest Pennsylvania to the Mountain Valley Pipeline.
The first phase of the Rover Pipeline was completed in late 2017, while the second phase, providing 3.25bn ft3/day of capacity into Midwest markets and to the Dawn hub in Ontario, is expected to enter service in the first half this year.
Finally, the Nexus Pipeline, which follows a route similar to Rover, will add 1.5bn ft3/day of new capacity, with 950mn ft3/day of Marcellus and Utica production expected to be delivered to it by the Appalachian Lease Project, scheduled to come online later this year.