Hi, this is Sandy Segrist, gas and midstream senior editor for Hart Energy. Joining me today is Allen Fore with Kinder Morgan, executive vice president of public affairs. We have been talking today, a whole lot, about the demand for natural gas and the kind of infrastructure that is going to be needed. This year we have two LNG projects that came online at the end of last year, and then Golden Pass LNG is expected to come online possibly by the end of the year or sooner than that. What does Kinder Morgan see as far as a need and [when] being able to meet that need for the demand for natural gas is going to be coming on?
Allen Fore: Yeah, certainly LNG is going to be a big part of it. We have our Trident [Intrastate] project that's about $1.6, $1.7 billion of new pipe coming from Katy to Port Arthur, primarily for LNG gas. There's also some power generation components to that, but it's really part of a larger group of expansion projects over $8 billion, closer to $9 billion of backlog that we have, which are projects that have been approved in the regulatory phase, pre-construction phase. Most of that is natural gas. So you have LNG in an enormous way at a number of locations, a number of entities, but you also have all of the power generation, the AI, the data centers. I was on a panel yesterday in Austin and in central Texas you have Travis County, Austing and then the surrounding counties like Caldwell County and Bastrop County, SpaceX, X AI in Caldwell County, a new 1500-acre development.
All that is going to require additional natural gas capacity, and as companies are looking to expand those facilities or locate those facilities—part of the reason that SpaceX and Tesla has an enormous facility outside of Austin is because of the availability of natural gas infrastructure adjacent to nearby. That's an absolute must that these companies have for the billions of dollars investment that's coming along with it. Our pipelines are very well situated in central Texas and many areas across the country. As I mentioned on the panel, we transport one-third of the natural gas in the country. Just think about that. That's thousands and thousands of miles of pipeline that go to population centers and on the way to population centers, which is where these facilities are generally going to be located. So, enormous growth opportunities there. We are investing billions of dollars in that with the existing assets we have, plus the additional assets that we have.
This is the time to build. I've said this previously with the administration and the Energy Dominance Council on working to make the United States the leader in energy production around the world. A necessary part of that is midstream and you have to have the pipelines and the facilities to get product to where it's needed. Some might call it the golden age of pipeline construction because it is a time to build, and we're seeing actual results from that too. It's not just talk out of Washington, it's actual action. And one of the problems that we've talked about at this conference is when projects need to have certainty about them. Most of the companies that build and spend billions building need to be risk averse. The risk comes in schedule bumps. So yes, you can plan for the various costs, but if you have a schedule bump and it has a regulatory hook to it, you could be looking at three or four months of delays, which could be project detrimental.
When you have an administration and the agencies that are saying, “how can we help?”—they're literally saying, those words. I've heard them myself. “How can we help?” It's a stunning change, and I want to be clear, it's not short changing or cutting corners or lessening standards, but they’re saying, “This is a priority. These infrastructure projects are priorities. Are we doing everything we can to make sure that we are processing this in a timely manner? If there are any hiccups, can we address those?” I think that's incredibly meaningful for projects, for our company and others for growing infrastructure and meeting the demands domestically, internationally and otherwise for the next generation.
SS: Okay. Thank you very much. Just focusing in on one specific project, especially coming out of the Permian. Kinder Morgan announced FID [final investment decision] on the Gulf Coast Express expansion, was that last year? How's that going?
AF: It's going well, and it's really part of a number of growth projects and expansions we've done to service the area and through with the Permian. Our PHP, Permian Highway Pipeline, our Gulf Coast pipeline ,GSX, [there are] expansions of both of those. So $2 billion originally and probably another $1 billion if you add up the full expansion on those projects and additional smaller projects like the Central Texas project we did, the Blue Bonnet project we did to serve San Antonio. All of these are part of this growth and expansion to service a variety of domestic and LNG pieces. That project, the Gulf Coast expansion is about $450 million. It's under construction, and we expect that to be in service by the middle of next year. We also have our Gulf Coast Storage project, which is actually part of the NGPL system. We're getting all of our systems involved here. That's a big part of it too. That's about $150 million for additional storage.
Again, I mean, if you add those up, that's $5 billion plus, and I fully expect that to go beyond just for moving this Permian gas, how many more pipes are needed? We're a very risk-averse company and we're not going to build something unless it has certainty about it. [With] regulatory certainty, we can build it. We have long-term committed shippers on those projects and certainly that there's a rate of return that makes sense for our shareholders. So all of those things coming together need to be there. But even with that, we're seeing really incredible opportunities in some sense, maybe once in a lifetime opportunities where all of these things are converging together. You've got the AI, you've got the data center, you've got your power plant conversions, and you have LNG export all coming together to see a really good environment for additional construction. So we've got those projects you mentioned, Gulf Coast and others, and I fully expect more to come.
AF: $8.8 billion already, but potentially more to come.
SS: Thank you very much. That's all that I have for today. This is Sandy Segrist with Hart Energy. We're at SUPER DUG Conference and Expo 2025 and joining me has been Allen Fore with Kinder Morgan. Thank you.