In the year since New York state denied a water permit for the proposed Constitution Pipeline and Kinder Morgan pulled the plug on the Northeast Direct proposed project, upstream and midstream companies have continue to pound the table for increased access to New York and New England, without seeing much progress.

There now seems to be a dawning realization among regional power generators and some analysts that less gas might actually be needed, at least in the near- and mid-term, and that existing channels may be sufficient. At the same time, there has been a realization by producers and carriers that despite the alluring prize represented by the densest consumer market in the country, the moat of politics and expense means other markets are actually more rewarding.

“Producers have to monetize their resource,” says Teri Viswanath, managing director of natural gas at PIRA Energy, a forecasting and analytics unit of S&P Global Platts. “Faced with a patchwork of state policies, producers and pipeline companies are having to look outside the northeast region.”

Which is not to say that they haven’t tried.

Viswanath notes that “there have been quite a few projects proposed. The last of those is Constitution, and that is stuck in the courts. I was just at a conference where some of the sponsors of Constitution talked about how they are persisting but also how they have to move beyond this. For example, there is Atlantic Sunrise project, but that moves Marcellus gas south.”

That addresses producers’ needs to find markets for their molecules and also the midstream mandate to build capacity out of shale regions, but does not address the need for gas for power generation in New York and New England. The math on that is not disputed.

According to the New England Power Generators Association (NEPGA), utilities have announced retirements of 4,200 megawatts (MW) of generating capacity, most of it coal-fired and nuclear, “with the potential for more to come.” That is offset by 4,120 MW of new generation capacity is scheduled to come online by mid-2020.

Natural gas already provides the largest segment of New England’s power—41% as of 2016—reports NEGPA, citing data from the regional wholesale power market ISO-NE. So the need for more gas might seem obvious. But NEPGA suggests that beyond 2020 the gas share will only increase 2 percentage points. In contrast, renewables will grow from 9% in 2016 to 20% beyond 2020.

In addition to power generation is heat. But again, demand growth is not so clear. In the rural Northeast, there is a significant market for propane heat. The New York metropolitan area largely switched from oil heat to gas in the 1980s, but New England remains a predominantly oil heat market.

“We’ve been lucky in the Northeast with two mild winters in a row,” says Viswanath. “But the reality remains this is a tight distribution system with too many consumers at the end of the pipe. If reliability is not going to be met from gas, it will be met some other way. In the end the question will be resolved either by renewables or incremental expansions in gas supply, or by imports of electricity. As a result, pipeline capital is moving away from the region to better options elsewhere in the country.”

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