Gas pipeline company delays $3-billion New England pipeline project

Spectra Energy is telling federal regulators it's delaying filings need for approval for a pipeline project aimed at pumping large amounts of fracked gas from Pennsylvania to New England.

The delay in the Access Northeast project, which would expand the company's existing pipeline network and storage facilities, comes because of successful efforts in three states to keep Spectra from selling the gas to power companies for electricity plants. This includes a decision by the Supreme Judicial Court in August that bars electricity companies from billing customers for the costs of the pipeline project.

Instead, the company is now trying to sign up utilities that provide natural gas to homes and businesses that mainly use natural gas for heating, according to Marcellus Drilling, which covers fracking in Pennsylvania.

The project is separate from the company's West Roxbury pipeline, which is intended to bolster National Grid's network in Boston, and which is nearly complete.

News of the delay came in a filing by Spectra's Algonquin Gas Transmission subsidiary with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission earlier this month. The company had originally hoped to file for final FERC approval of the project, which would expand the company's existing pipelines and storage facilities, this year, in the hopes the commission would complete its review by mid-2018, letting the company turn on the gas at the end of 2018.

But with the shift in potential customers, the company reported it won't get its filings to the commission before mid-2017, which would push the project out to sometime in 2019, Marcellus Drilling reports. In its filing, Algonquin writes:

Algonquin believes it is prudent to take additional time to solidify the commercial foundation for critically needed infrastructure and to complete its analysis of the Access Northeast facilities.

H/t Andrea Doremus Cuetara.