Politicians and environmentalists in the northeast US have spent years fighting and causing pipelines to be canceled…
The list (just the major ones))
All these pipelines were to be built to add supply to the northeast US. Due to their cancellations, the northeast now turns to Russia and the EU for natural gas as they simply can’t bring enough from the Marcellus shales just a few hundred miles away as there is no more additional pipeline capacity.
They were all canceled due to political opposition and now the people of the northeast (again) are feeling the brunt of these decisions with residents there paying 2x-3x more than the rest of the nation for nat gas. Since nat gas is also the #1 electricity producer in the US, the northeast also is paying nearly 2X what the rest of the nation is to simply keep its lights on. The only part of the US even close to paying what the northeast is are the equally nat gas hostile politicians in the northwest US.
The bad news? It is only going to get worse…..
The News:
- Boston Harbor is home to the Nation’s longest-operating LNG import facility, and as the corridor has been unable to expand pipeline capacity fast enough to keep up with natural gas demand growth, Massachusetts and neighboring States have imported liquified natural gas from abroad; in 2020 Boston’s Everett Terminal accounted for 60% of the Nation’s LNG imports.
- With natural gas prices in Europe shattering records, and leading European utilities to pull in every last LNG cargo on the water, LNG prices have risen alongside European gas prices; this has had a knock-on effect, causing prices for January 2022 gas delivery on the Algonquin system (encompassing Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut) to rise almost 600% from January 2021 levels.