While covid-19 shelter in place and PennEast commenting periods were going on, FERC quietly released their State of the Markets report.

This report is just raining bad news for PennEast. It basically indicates that demand in the North East is totally saturated, and that pipeline capacity additions in the North East are trailing off as a result. The MidWest and South now represent areas where new pipeline capacity may be needed.

It also continues the tale of prices continuing to fall, and electrical and residential gas demand remaining effectively flat. The small increase in demand is basically all coming from LNG Exports, but such exports are really a trickle compared to other users.

This is also doubly bad for PennEast because they have changed their marketing message with this 2-phase plan to be “rah rah PA, NJ sucks!”. See:

https://penneastpipeline.com/penneast-files-new-phased-approach-with-federal-regulators-to-meet-growing-customer-demand/

This new marketing approach is really startling in that PennEast is almost literally thumbing their nose at NJ and focusing exclusively on Philly and PA benefits only.  This is doubling down on the Adelphia Gateway connection.

Coupled with the lame 338,000 dekatherms/day commitment they have on Phase 1, this ends up presenting an incredibly weak Purpose and Need story to FERC for Phase 1.

I suspect NJDEP, US EPA, and other agencies are going to hammering pretty hard on these facts, along with the obvious overbuild Phase 1 now represents.