"Right now, we're looking at starting construction in early 2016" and completing the pipeline by the end of that year, Rasmussen adds.

Don Santa, president and CEO of the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America (INGAA), says that while demand for gas "is not growing as quickly as supply, it is growing," especially in the electric industry. Utilities, under pressure to tighten federal emissions rules, are retiring older coal-fired units and replacing them with new gas-fired capacity.

For instance, Duke Energy Progress, a Duke Energy subsidiary that plans to retire all its older, smaller coal-fired units, is building a 620-MW, gas-fired combined-cycle unit at its Sutton station in eastern North Carolina to help replace them. Piedmont Natural Gas said on May 31 that it has completed a 120-mile gas pipeline to serve the new unit.

In July, NextEra Energy, the corporate parent of Florida Power & Light, expects to select the winner of its December request for proposals to build a 700-mile, multibillion-dollar gas pipeline from west-central Alabama to southern Florida. FPL wants the gas the pipeline would provide by May 2017 to help fuel the fleet of six new 1,250-MW, gas-fired combined-cycle plants the utility has been building.

Taking Stock of Feedstocks

Natural-gas-liquids pipelines also are needed to deliver condensates such as propane, butane and ethane from shale plays to petrochemical facilities, many near the Gulf of Mexico in Texas and Louisiana, says INGAA's Santa.

For example, by late 2015, a joint venture of Williams and Boardwalk Pipeline Partners plans to build a new NGL pipeline from NGL production areas in the Marcellus and Utica regions to Hardinsburg, Ky., where the line would connect with Boardwalk's Texas Gas pipeline. A portion of the Texas Gas pipeline would be converted from carrying natural gas north to carrying NGLs south, from Hardinsburg to Eunice, La.

But not all the news regarding pipeline construction is positive. In late May, Kinder Morgan Energy Partners canceled plans for the $2-billion Freedom project, which would have transported West Texas crude oil to Southern California.

In April three companies that had been co-developing the $1-billion Commonwealth gas pipeline from Williamsport, Pa., to Washington, D.C., announced they have suspended that plan. Lack of sufficient interest was cited in both decisions to terminate.

This year, the INGAA Foundation will update a 2011 study forecasting an average of 2,000 miles of new natural-gas pipelines and 1,300 miles of oil and NGL pipelines will be built every year in the U.S. through 2035, says Santa.