During Infrastructure Week, policymakers and industry leaders will highlight the systems that keep America moving. Roads, bridges, ports, and airports rightly receive attention. But one of the most important infrastructure stories this year is happening underground.
Natural gas pipelines are in focus because America’s energy needs are growing, quickly.
Electricity needs are climbing, in part because artificial intelligence and data centers require enormous amounts of reliable power. At the same time, liquefied natural gas exports continue to expand, allowing the U.S. to supply allies and trading partners abroad while strengthening domestic production. In its 2026 Annual Energy Outlook, the U.S. Energy Information Administration projects strong long-term growth in natural gas demand from both the power sector and export markets.
Natural gas is the largest source of electricity generation in the U.S. at approximately 41%, providing reliable and affordable power to homes, businesses, manufacturers, hospitals, and schools. As demand for natural gas continues to grow, infrastructure capacity must grow with it so that low-cost, reliable energy can reach the consumers and businesses that depend on it.
The Appalachian Basin, home to the Marcellus and Utica shales, is expected to play a central role in meeting future demand. Production in the East region remains among the lowest-cost in the nation. But abundant supply alone is not enough. Natural gas must be transported to where it is needed, including manufacturing centers, power plants, and export terminals along the Gulf Coast.
Pipelines make that possible.
Pipelines are the essential link between America’s energy resources and the consumers who depend on them. They deliver affordable energy to homes, fuel industrial growth, support grid reliability, and enable exports that enhance national security. Without pipelines, natural gas cannot get from the wellhead to power plants, factories, or family homes. Without adequate pipeline capacity, supply bottlenecks emerge, prices become more volatile, and economic opportunities are lost.
The infrastructure required to meet that demand is significant. The INGAA Foundation’s recent North American Midstream Infrastructure Report projects that more than $1 trillion in new midstream investment will be required through 2052. That includes roughly 37,000 miles of additional natural gas transmission pipelines and more than 100,000 miles of gathering systems needed to connect production to processing facilities and major transmission networks.
To meet those long-term projections, companies are already investing; many major pipeline projects are moving forward today.
According to Fortune, natural gas pipeline construction in the U.S. is experiencing its largest growth surge in nearly two decades, since the beginning of the shale revolution. More than 150 pipeline projects are planned nationwide, representing roughly 150 billion cubic feet of new capacity, according to analytics firm Arbo. Wood Mackenzie estimates that companies have committed $50 billion to new pipeline investments that would add approximately 8,800 miles of infrastructure across the country.
This builds on the approximately 6.3 billion cubic feet per day of new capacity added to the grid in 2025, with most of that infrastructure directed toward the South-Central region and the rapidly growing LNG corridor along the Gulf Coast. Last year’s buildout, coupled with progress being made today are meaningful, much more infrastructure will be needed in the years ahead to keep pace with rising demand
The U.S. has an enormous advantage in its abundant, low-cost natural gas resources. It also has an opportunity to lead in artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing, and global energy exports. But those opportunities depend on infrastructure that can move energy from where it is produced to where it is needed.
This Infrastructure Week, policymakers should recognize that pipelines are every bit as vital as highways and bridges. They may run underground and out of sight, but they help power factories, data centers, export terminals, and homes across the country.
Amy Andryszak is the president and chief executive officer of the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America, a Washington, D.C. based trade association representing interstate natural gas pipeline companies.
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
If we could get our heads straight about nuclear energy, it would reduce, but not eliminate, the need for pipelines. Getting our heads straight includes no magical thinking about fusion.
Nuclear energy is on its way to a resurgence, particularly latest generation reactor technologies and reactor scaling. There are moves afoot in the US to rapidly prove, license, and deploy small modular reactors as one means of helping meet AI energy demands among other things. The key question is whether safe scalable SMRs will be commercialized in time to make a difference in the world of data center and AI development.
On the broader scale, were it not for AI, there is no rush for nuclear development. Since there is no CO2 induced climate change concern, we can continue to rely on proven, cheap and dispatchable coal and gas-fired electric power generation for the foreseeable future. In particular, we must halt the headlong wasting of trillions of dollars and ecological devastation of wind and solar generation. These are a foolish mistake and a useless distraction.
Yes, and “rapidly” is a relative term.
I’d like to know what this board thinks are the companies best positioned to win the SMR race in the U.S. and what companies are best positioned to meet the needs for natural gas pipeline, gathering, etc.?
As I was reading the article, the thought occurred to me that natural gas and oil are useful for so many really important things besides electric generation, like fertilizers and plastics, which help grow abundant food and make most of the things we use daily. Uranium is good for a lot of things too, but principally generating electricity and making bombs. Leaving aside the bomb question, why are we not using uranium to generate power and oil and gas for everything else?
You would be amazed how many people actually believe that nuclear power plants can explode, and kill everyone in 100 miles.
They also seem to believe that there was no radiation in the world until man started messing with nuclear power.
Jane Fonda and The China Syndrome.
Shoki:
As long as we have significant amounts of intermittant sources [wind & solar] we will need nat gas plants since they, along with hydroelectric, can do “load following” [can be ramped up & down rapidly; something that nuclear and coal can’t do]. This is a major reason why wind & solar make the grid more expensive & more fragile.
IMO we should stop all subsidies for wind/solar, use nuclear for baseload, and make our grid more resilient by building out more pipeline infrastructure. This last one is me being selfish since here in Arizona we get almost 1/2 of our gas/diesel from the nut jobs in California.
From my notes:
____________________________________________________
Congressional Democrats, the White House, federal
agencies and activist groups worked in consort on
day one of the Biden Administration to:
Cancel pipelines
Ban fracking
Impose leasing moratoriums
Impose drilling moratoriums
Slow-walk permits
Pressure financial institutions to stymie funding for oil and gas operations
______________________________________________________
If Democrats get in power again, they will do it again.
On day one of the Obama administration, Barack Hussein Obama canceled the Yucca Mountain project, the siting and design of a long-term high-level radioactive waste repository in Nevada. Close to $15 billion(in 2025 dollars) and decades of research and development had led to the congressional approval of the repository to be located adjacent to the Nevada test site, the location of past U.S. underground nuclear testing. It would have provided a geologically safe long-term storage solution for the decay of long lived radionuclides in spent nuclear fuels. By design, these could be removable if and when public policy changes with respect to reprocessing. The nuclear industry paid the fees, passed on to consumers, to fund this process.
At the time, I reviewed the full list of day-one Obama executive orders. I disagreed with practically all of them. Obama’s agenda from day one was the destruction and “transformation” of the United States into a communist hell hole. His agenda and involvement continue to this day in the radicalization of the Democrat party. Some say he is charming. I say he is a snake in the grass — a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Fortunately, for the United States, a brash, funny and fearless real estate developer arrived on the scene to pull us back from the brink of disaster. The democrat machine, radical left and bureaucratic state have spent the next 10 years trying to destroy him. President Trump makes mistakes as any person might, and he has a style that can appear bullish and rude, but also hilarious. The Important thing is that he represents the views and desires of the vast middle of the country, left and right of center, who he has enabled to act courageously against the forces seeking to destroy our nation and the developed West.
Climate change is but one issue among many that characterize the battle lines.
Democrats have brought down emissions and energy use in the Palisades by 99%.
Story tip: Bermuda, Reinsurance, and climate change BS.
The big money makers headquartered on the island of Bermuda are in the business of Reinsurance. That’s insurance for insurance companies so they don’t go bust when they have to make huge numbers of payouts for things like hurricane damage.
This video covers the history of Bermuda through to the present and its main business in reinsurance, then it goes off the rails with the usual claptrap about climate change, rising sea levels, increasing number and severity of storms, and how that’s *not* a bad thing for the reinsurance business. If those companies really are banking on those wild and have not happened at all nor are likely to happen catastrophic changes, they might need a 3rd level of reinsurance.
Great video, thanks for posting (-:
If you can convince people that something that isn’t going to happen anywhere anytime is actually going to happen somewhere sometime. Then you have a source of free money from people that are dumb enough to believe your sales pitch and buy an insurance policy.
Climate change is a text book example of how that works, and fits the definition of Racketeering
The narrator goes off the rails at about 10:30. For instance he says, “they employ armies of the world’s smartest climate scientists…” He posits that storms/hurricanes are increasing in both intensity and frequency.
I suspect that financial analysts are more important and are needed to navigate strategy amidst all factors but especially currency exchange, interest rates and investment.
What? No government subsidies? How old fashioned! 🙂