Last week, the Connecticut Office of Legislative Research published a report about the hurdles to expanding natural gas use in Connecticut.

“There are obstacles to increasing Connecticut’s natural gas supply at each stage of the supply chain,” the report, which is authored by Senior Legislative Attorney Jessica Schaeffer-Helmecki, states. “The largest obstacle to increasing natural gas production is the fact that, due to Connecticut’s geology, it has minimal natural gas resources that are highly unlikely to be developed. The New England region is also geologically unable to store natural gas underground for use during periods of peak demand.”

Schaeffer-Helmecki found that, because of the limited natural gas resources in Connecticut, the state would have to rely on interstate pipelines to expand its natural gas use. This would require navigating multiple federal and state agencies, which is difficult, both because of the bureaucratic process and changing regulations. It also might require seizing land through eminent domain, which is another protracted process that would have to go through courts. Finally, Schaeffer-Helmecki predicts both public pushback and difficulty securing a customer base, meaning future projects may not be financially viable.  

There are currently three pipelines that carry natural gas to Connecticut: the Algonquin Gas Transmission, which originates in New Jersey, the Iroquois Gas Transmission System, which originates in northern New York, and the Tennessee Gas Transmission, which draws natural gas from multiple places in the Gulf of America. Additionally, there is a proposed pipeline called the Constitution, which would run 125 miles from New York to Pennsylvania.

“Local distribution company (LDC; e.g., CT Natural Gas or Eversource) demand can be difficult to predict,” Schaeffer-Helmecki’s report states. “The largest natural gas takers (electric generators) typically do not enter into long term capacity agreements.”

Despite this, demand for natural gas in Connecticut is growing, especially in the winter, according to an S&P Global study that was published earlier this month.

This study identified some of the same obstacles that Schaeffer-Helmecki’s report did, including limited resources in the region and minimal construction.

“In the past, Connecticut created an initiative aimed at encouraging natural gas transmission pipeline companies to increase their capacity into the state and region by limiting some of the financial risk of the expansion,” Schaeffer-Helmecki’s report states. “However, the multi-state procurement process did not occur once a court overruled Massachusetts’ participation in it, and the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) cancelled the customer conversion program in 2022 finding, among other things, an insufficient number of new customers enrolled in the program to justify the level of ratepayer subsidies that were needed to continue it.”

This S&P Global study found that, if the barriers to constructing the Constitution can be overcome, the pipeline would save ratepayers in the region a net $8.5 billion in its first 15 years of use. It would also generate an additional $8.5 billion in revenue for businesses in Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, and Massachusetts during that time period.