Low Holiday Temperatures Prompt Record Natural Gas Demand

When the clock ticked from 2017 into 2018, thermometers up and down the east coast hovered at record lows, well below freezing temperatures. Those celebrating outside, whether it was Times Square or one of the numerous other celebrations, returned home from the bone chilling climate to their homes – their warm homes. As Forbes writes, in order “to keep America warm, power plants are burning a record amount of natural gas,” which amounts to just about “143 billion cubic feet per day.”

The record levels of demand for natural gas during the holidays was just the latest example of the consistently growing need for access to this low-cost heating source. Over the last ten years,

“Northeast demand for natural gas has surged as plentiful supplies of shale gas from the Marcellus shale in Pennsylvania have flooded into the region displacing mothballed coal plants and the closure of nuclear plant Vermont Yankee. The region wants more gas, but supply infrastructure hasn’t kept up.”

This supply-demand conflict “shouldn’t be necessary so close to one of the world’s biggest natural gas fields” in the Marcellus Shale that Pennsylvania sits over “where drillers and frackers have grown output from just a puff a decade ago to a recent 20 billion cubic feet per day.”

Frigid temperatures are reliably consistent as the days get shorter, and as America turns their thermostats up it’s important that they have access to a low-cost and efficient source of heat for their homes. Expanding our pipeline infrastructure here in Pennsylvania will allow us to bring what we produce to more and bigger markets, along with helping hard working Americans keep more of their own money.