While the natural gas industry generally believes the multiplepipeline projects planned for the Midwest and New England areoverkill, Roger Gale of the Washington International Energy Groupwould disagree.

If as many nuclear plants close in the short term as his grouppredicts, the pipeline construction projects currently on thedrawing boards to import Alberta gas into the Midwest and NewEngland “are not going to be sufficient” to meet the demand for gasin those regions, he told energy executives at GasMart/Power ’98Wednesday.

“And if New England absorbs as much gas [as] we think it mayneed in the next five to 10 years [due to nuclear plant closings],there’s not going to be a whole lot that’s going to get dropped[off] in the Midwest on the way,” said Gale, the group’s president.This will spell disaster for the Midwest, which he projects willsee shutdowns of an additional 4,000 to 5,000 MW of nuclearcapacity during this timeframe.

The Washington International Energy Group is expected to releasenext week a study detailing these and other findings. The study,which is an update of the one commissioned last year by theInterstate Natural Gas Association of America, will makepredictions about the effects of these nuclear shutdowns oninterstate pipeline projects.

Since last year, Gale reported there have been six additionalnuclear plant closings in the United States and seven moreshutdowns in Canada. He further noted that top power executives aregrowing increasingly pessimistic about the fate of nuclear plants.”If you ask, will a large number of nuclear plants be shut down[over] the next five years, since last year the number of people[executives] who say ‘yes’ has just about doubled.”

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