Four Northeast pipelines, four related challenges

Why filling ~900 MMcfd of spare western Appalachia takeaway is a multi-year story

Although most Northeast takeaway capacity is full, four routes in western Appalachia are consistently underutilized. Across Columbia Gulf, TGP Zone 4, Rover, and Nexus, flows fell ~900 MMcfd short of capacity last summer. Unlike the Southeast, where a single downstream project will unlock capacity on both Transco and MVP, each of these four western routes faces a different connectivity problem. Filling this spare capacity is likely to happen only gradually.

Figure 1 | Spare western Appalachia takeaway capacity

Getting more Northeast gas into one or more of these pipelines is likely the cheapest and easiest way to grow Appalachian production in the near term. Range looks set to grow ~250 MMcfd into new Rover capacity, and new power plants will likely pull almost as much gas south on TGP. EOG could grow into ~150 MMcfd of unutilized Nexus capacity, but the largest tranche of unutilized takeaway — ~300 MMcfd on Columbia Gulf — does not yet offer a compelling risk-reward for producers.

Columbia Gulf: Spare capacity likely not held by producers