Dominion on Friday filed at FERC for its Leidy South Project, which would provide 155,000 Dth/d of firm transportation service in the Mid-Atlantic region through upgrades and modifications to the Dominion Transmission Inc. (DTI) system.

Gas moving on the expansion capacity would serve new and existing power generation facilities. The additional capacity would run from the Leidy Interconnect in Clinton, PA, to points in Loudoun County, VA. Customers with binding agreements for all of the capacity are Panda Stonewall LLC, Virginia Power Services Energy Corp. Inc, and Mattawoman Energy LLC.

“As power generators are faced with the challenges of retiring older coal-fired generation stations, the need for additional natural gas-fired generation grows,” Dominion said in its filing [CP15-492]. “In addition, the constantly increasing abundance of natural gas supply has kept prices low, making natural gas more cost effective, as well as environmentally cleaner, for power generation. DTI proposes to commence construction of the project facilities in May 2016 in order to meet an in-service date for the contracted firm transportation service on or before Oct. 1, 2017.” The pipeline requested a certificate order from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission by March.

The expansion would be accomplished mainly through the addition of new compression facilities at multiple locations. The estimated cost of the project is $209.66 million. DTI is not proposing to abandon any service; facilities that would be removed as part of the project are to be replaced, it said.

Dominion is pursuing a slate of Marcellus/Utica shale-oriented market access projects to serve gas and power utilities and/or power generation demand. The company’s three projects are Leidy South, CPV Power Generation and Keys Power Generation (see Daily GPI, Feb. 9).