New Northeast takeaway capacity is coming next year
Transco's Southeast Supply Enhancement likely to unconstrain Station 165 while re-constraining Station 195
In 2025, five US LNG projects totaling 8 Bcfd of capacity took FID, on top of 7 Bcfd already under construction and alongside accelerating growth in gas-fired generation. At the same time, well results are deteriorating in the Haynesville, and the pace of Permian wellhead gas production growth is unmistakably slowing, meaning that Henry Hub prices are likely to rise. The only surefire way to ease this price pressure is to move more gas out of Appalachia.
A challenging commercial paradigm for new pipeline development has thus far precluded FID on Texas Gas’s proposed 2 Bcfd Borealis Project. But the one class of buyers with the right institutional structure to backstop new takeaway — utilities with a rate base — is doing exactly that. They are the shippers behind EQT’s MVP Boost expansion, which will add 600 BBtu/d and targets a 2028 in-service date. And another Southeast-utility-backed project already has its FERC certificate and will improve market access for Appalachian gas even sooner. Transco’s Southeast Supply Enhancement project adds ~1.6 TBtu/d of capacity from Station 165 and its nearby interconnect with Mountain Valley Pipeline to various Southeast delivery markets.
While the project, scheduled for in-service by the end of next year, isn’t Northeast takeaway per se, it will alleviate constraints on Northeast takeaway routes and add 600-1,200 BBtu/d of effective Northeast exit capacity.
What is the scope of SSE?
SSE modifications consist of looping in Virginia (between stations 160 and 165) and North Carolina (between stations 155 and 160); compressor upgrades at stations 140, 150, and 155; and re-piping of compressors at stations 135, 125, 120, and 105 to make them bidirectional.1
Duke contracted for 1 TBtu/d, Southern for 400 BBtu/d, and a host of others for the remaining ~200. Although Duke’s delivery meters are in North Carolina, most of its capacity must go to Station 85, as only ~302 BBtu/d of contracts have primary delivery points in North Carolina.
What is SSE going to do to flows and basis?
New sources of gas into Station 165
Prior to MVP’s in-service, Transco southbound flows through Station 195 were constrained, with throughput consistently near the capacity of ~2.7 TBtu/d. When MVP came online, it backed off southbound flows at Station 195 and instead caused frequent constraints at Station 165. These constraints at Station 165 also resulted in under-utilization of MVP.
Figure 1 | Station 195, Station 165, and MVP flows and capacity
Once SSE is in service, it will unlock the volumes at Station 195 and on MVP that previously were constrained by downstream capacity at Station 165. Over the last year, combined spare capacity on these two routes averaged ~940 MMcfd, albeit highly seasonal, as shown in Figure 2. Both of these routes are likely to fill once SSE is online: MVP from other southwest Appalachian supplies and Station 195 via TETCO at Lower Chanceford.
Figure 2 | Spare capacity into Transco Zone 5
Therefore, depending on the time of year, SSE will add 600-1,300 MMcfd of effective Northeast takeaway capacity through a combination of higher flows on MVP and higher flows through Transco Station 195. Additional capacity will come later, via EQT’s MVP Boost project, scheduled for mid-2028 and also backed by Duke. At 600 BBtu/d, MVP Boost would fully address the supply shortfall into SSE during the shoulder season and partially during peak-demand months.
Impact on flows and constraints
These shifting flows will relieve some constraints but induce others:
Since potential supplies into Station 165 only total ~60% of SSE’s ~1.6 Bcfd, Station 165 is likely to again be unconstrained
The Station 195 constraint is likely to return, since the new capacity at Station 165 will call on as much gas as Station 195 can possibly deliver
Losers from the shift from a constraint at Station 165 to one at Station 195 will be the shippers on Transco’s 2021 Southeastern Trail project, who have receipts between Station 165 and Station 195 at Pleasant Valley.
Figure 3 | Southbound capacity-holders through Station 165 by project
How far south gas moves from Station 165
The spare MVP and Station 195 capacity, and the eventual MVP Boost supplies, define two scenarios for incremental gas into Station 165.2 To model these two supply scenarios, I developed a structured, meter-level nodal dataset for Transco based on its EBB location data and maps.
This structured dataset enables me to translate daily, meter-level pipeline operational data into throughput estimates at any point along the pipeline. From that, I can estimate not just where the central Transco null point is, but where it would have been with the additional MVP and Station 195 supplies, or those plus ~600 MMcfd from MVP Boost.
Figure 4 | Estimated Transco flows by meter and central null point
In peak-demand months, when the null point was already north of Duke’s territory, SSE supplies alone would hardly shift it at all. But in a shoulder month, an additional ~1.6 Bcfd could create a new constraint at Station 85. Demand growth in the Southeast means such a constraint will be short-lived if it materializes. But Duke itself seems to acknowledge this risk, as the primary delivery point for much of its capacity is at Station 85, not North Carolina. This null point analysis shows that compressor station reversals as far south as Georgia were needed for SSE shippers to capture the value of unused capacity in the months or years before they fully grow into the new capacity.
What this means for Northeast takeaway
SSE’s in-service will add ~600–1,300 MMcfd of effective Northeast takeaway capacity, depending on the season, with the range rising by ~600 MMcfd once MVP Boost comes online in 2028. That won’t be enough on its own to close the gap between demand growth and supply — for that, Borealis and others like it are still needed — but it does help. I’ll unpack the decade of pipeline development decisions that led us here — from the Duke RFP to ACP’s cancellation to the Manchin sidecar — in a follow-up post.
Gas sometimes flows south through these compressor stations without any compression.
Although incremental supply into Transco north of Station 165 is limited by capacity on MVP and at Station 195, it is possible that flows through Station 165 could increase more, inasmuch as buyers north of Station 165 will now need to compete with those between stations 85 and 165, which previously did not have the same gas supply availability. However, because gas-fired generation typically grows incrementally over time rather than in large step-changes, and because SSE is so large, the supply-defined scenarios seem most realistic.