On its 2Q26 earnings call, EQT announced it is accelerating construction of MVP Southgate, pulling forward $85 million in capex from 2027 to 2026. EQT has not yet moved the pipeline’s 2028 in-service date, saying that it is still aligning commercial terms with a potentially earlier start. Already, one-third of the pipe is welded, and more than half of the right-of-way is cleared, pointing to a 2H27 in-service.
The project’s two shippers, Duke and Enbridge Gas North Carolina (formerly PSNC), are short FT relative to demand. EGNC should want the capacity as soon as it is available: MVP Southgate can immediately displace its Transco receipts and diversify its supply mix. But MVP Southgate does not reach far enough south to serve most existing Duke plants, and Duke’s Person County combined-cycle project is not due online until 2028.
MVP Southgate will free up Transco capacity to move gas further south. But with Southeast gas burn limited by combined-cycle capacity, that gas will mostly back off eastbound flows through Transco’s Station 85.
How do Duke and EGNC source gas currently?
Duke, EGNC, and Piedmont — a Duke subsidiary since 2016 and the largest North Carolina LDC — overwhelmingly source gas from Transco, directly or indirectly. All three have many physical Transco meters, but each nominates to a single virtual meter. Duke holds Transco capacity, but that gas reaches its plants via either Piedmont’s or EGNC’s distribution system, and sometimes also through Cardinal Pipeline.1
Figure 1 | North Carolina existing gas infrastructure and gas-fired power plants
Only two other interstate gas systems can deliver into North Carolina, but neither moves much. East Tennessee Natural Gas moves gas out of the state via its Transco interconnect, and Columbia Gas delivers ~10 MMcfd into Piedmont in northeastern North Carolina.
What does MVP Southgate do?
After years of legal battles, the ~2 Bcfd Mountain Valley Pipeline (light blue line in Figure 2) entered service in 2024. MVP Southgate (red line in Figure 2) was originally proposed as a 375 BBtu/d downstream extension of MVP, with EGNC (then PSNC) as its lone 300 BBtu/d shipper. When MVP stalled, Equitrans2 paused MVP Southgate development.
Atlantic Coast Pipeline’s cancellation revived MVP Southgate’s prospects, and MVP’s 2024 in-service made it viable. Without ACP, Duke contracted for 250 BBtu/d on MVP Southgate, and EQT upsized the pipeline to 550 BBtu/d. In Duke’s filings with the North Carolina Utilities Commission, the company justifies its capacity commitment as needed to support its existing fleet and backstop future coal retirements and combined-cycle buildout — 6.8 GW of new CCs by 2033, per Duke’s latest integrated resource plan.
In the near term, though, Duke has only one new CC — 1.3 GW at Person County (red diamond in Figure 2) — under construction, with a 2028 in-service date. EGNC is building a new distribution pipeline, T-15 (yellow dotted line), from MVP Southgate to the plant, due in service in 2027.
Figure 2 | Current and under construction North Carolina gas and power infrastructure