MARC LEVY, Associated Press
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Federal energy regulators have approved a $700 million pipeline project designed to bring cheap Marcellus Shale natural gas from Pennsylvania into high-priced markets in New England and New York.
The project’s backers said Wednesday that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s approval means the 124-mile Constitution Pipeline could be built and operational by next winter, if it gets the remaining regulatory approvals from Pennsylvania, New York and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in a timely fashion.
The project is the first to be approved out of a slew of proposals designed to bring Marcellus Shale gas to New York and New England.
The lead partners are Tulsa, Oklahoma-based Williams Partners LP and Houston-based Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. Williams will operate the pipeline, while Cabot and Southwestern Energy have long-term agreements to supply the gas. Other partners include Piedmont Natural Gas Company Inc. and WGL Holdings Inc.
Lindsay Schneider, an analyst at Wood Mackenzie, said the pipeline could bring up prices for producers like Cabot in northern Pennsylvania, while potentially bring down home heating prices in New York and New England. But calculating the effect on home heating prices would be difficult to do, she said.
Meanwhile, solving the larger problem of winter energy price spikes in New England will require an additional expansion of pipeline capacity into that area for those coldest days of the year, she said.
The Marcellus Shale is the largest-known underground natural gas reservoir in Pennsylvania. Production from the reserve, beginning in the last five years, has made Pennsylvania the nation’s second-largest natural gas producer behind Texas.
Marcellus Shale gas is about half the cost of the Gulf of Mexico gas that traditionally reached Boston and New York City through existing pipelines. It also is cheaper than Canadian gas that flows to the Northeast.
The pipeline would run from Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna County through New York’s Broome, Chenango, and Delaware counties to connect with the existing Tennessee and Iroquois pipelines in the Schoharie County town of Wright, 80 miles southwest of Albany, New York.
The Northeast has become increasingly reliant on natural gas for home heating, but congested pipelines are ill-equipped to bring the gas directly from Pennsylvania.
Landowners rallied along with environmental and consumer advocates yesterday outside a Boston meeting of the regional power grid operator, ISO-NE. Dissatisfied with energy planning in the region, these residents called on ISO-NE to kick its gas addiction and plan for a clean power future.
“We’re here today to give a wake up call to the grid operator,” said Arnold Piacentini of Richmond, a town along the route of the proposed Tennessee Gas Pipeline. “ISO-NE is using scare tactics to justify making a bad problem — the region’s gas addiction — worse, and we’re not buying it.”
Massachusetts’ overreliance on gas is leaving ratepayers susceptible to volatile prices while furthering environmental burdens created by the burning of fossil fuels, according to the group. Massachusetts’ power generation is already trending towards 63 percent reliance on gas, but rather than adopting low-burden, lower-cost, energy diverse pathways forward, ISO-NE continues to push for ratepayer-subsidized expansion of pipelines carrying gas from the Marcellus Shale, the group said in a statement.
“Massachusetts has committed to fight climate change and we cannot afford to be burning more fracked gas” said Ninya Loeppky of Boston Climate Action Network. “New gas pipelines are destructive today and a poor choice for a swiftly warming planet.”
Failure to plan for the retirement of significant power generation in the region, to fully integrate efficiency and clean technologies like wind and solar, and to coordinate gas and electrical markets has resulted in energy supply issues for select days during the winter. ISO-NE, as the grid operator, is responsible for managing system reliability, energy markets and planning for the grid’s evolution, according to the group.
“Fundamentally, we live here, we pay the bills and this is our power grid.” said Piacentini. “We deserve a voice in our own future, and we want clean power. ISO-NE must understand that.”
