The other hardest part of building a new pipeline

Permitting is only half the story — the commercial model broke first

Everyone blames regulators for blocking new pipelines, and with good reason. But permitting isn’t the only intractable constraint, and sometimes not even the most important one. The commercial model that underwrote the shale-era build-out broke quietly years ago and hasn’t been replaced yet. Understanding why that happened explains as much about today’s…