FERC has issued a favorable environmental assessment (EA) that would allow Gulf South Pipeline to build the Southeast Market Expansion Project to increase gas deliveries primarily to the Southeast.

“Approval of the proposed project, with appropriate mitigating measures, would not constitute a major federal action significantly affecting the quality of the human environment,” staff of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) concluded in the EA [CP13-96].

Houston-based Gulf South Pipeline, a subsidiary of Boardwalk Pipeline Partners, proposes to construct approximately 70 miles of 24-inch diameter and 30-inch diameter natural gas pipeline facilities in Mississippi and Alabama; and 34,215 horsepower of additional compression in Mississippi. It also requests that Petal Gas Storage LLC be permitted to abandon capacity by lease to Gulf South. Capacity on Gulf South Pipeline’s system would be increased by 510,500 Dth/d if the Commission approves the expansion.

Most of the project’s incremental capacity would serve the expanding Southeast gas markets, but it also would provide additional volumes to the Northeast market via an interconnect with Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line, a Gulf South official said.

The project, which has an estimated cost of $283.8 million, is targeted for in-service on Nov. 1, 2014. Construction is scheduled to get underway in April 2014, assuming the project is approved by regulators.

Gulf South is a web-like pipeline that gathers natural gas from prolific basins between Texas and Alabama — such as the Haynesville Shale and Tuscaloosa Marine Shale — and delivers the gas to on-system markets within its footprint and to off-system markets in the Northeast, Midwest and Southeast through interconnections with third party pipelines.