The Sabal Trail Pipeline, which transports natural gas from Alabama to Florida, was authorized by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to begin full service on July 3, 2017. EIA previously reported that this pipeline will help supply natural gas to the growing fleet of natural gas-fired power plants in the state. As of November 2017, EIA data showed 38.4 gigawatts (GW) of natural gas-fired generation capacity in Florida, up 2% from a year ago, with 2 GW of new capacity planned for 2018. Sabal Trail is one part of a three-part project called the Southeast Markets Pipeline (SMP) project, which, when completed, will be capable of delivering more than 1 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) of natural gas into the state.
In August 2017, not long after the Sabal Trail Pipeline entered service, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia (DC) Circuit Court ruled that FERC did not adequately address greenhouse gas emissions in the SMP project’s Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). The court stated that FERC should have included a “quantative estimate of the downstream greenhouse gas emissions that will result from burning the natural gas that the pipelines will transport or explained more specifically why it could not have done so.” This ruling would have invalidated the construction approvals for the project, but FERC and pipeline owners requested another hearing, and the approvals were left in place temporarily.
In October 2017, FERC prepared a draft supplemental EIS (SEIS) for the project to address the shortcomings identified by the DC Circuit Court and opened the document to public comment. Last week, FERC issued the "final" SEIS, taking into consideration both the Court’s request for better environmental metrics and reconciling more than 100 comments from the public on the draft SEIS. Issuing the SEIS allowed construction and service on the larger SMP project, which includes Sabal Trail, to continue without interruption.
Though the Sabal Trail pipeline transported natural gas to help meet electricity demand in Florida last summer, data from PointLogic show that in recent months, flows on the pipeline have been relatively low. In January 2018, for example, the pipeline transported an average of 93 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) compared to its current capacity of about 810 MMcf/d. For more than half of the days in January, no natural gas was delivered on the line. However, on January 4, which was an extremely cold day throughout the eastern half of the country, the pipeline sent out 814 MMcf to help meet electric demand. (Many Florida residents, as is common in the Southeast, use electricity to heat their homes.)
Florida’s natural gas market is dominated by power sector consumption. In 2017, EIA data showed that approximately 86% of all deliveries in the state went to the electric sector. Industrial consumers used about 8% of deliveries, and the remaining 6% went to residential/commercial and vehicle fuel consumers.
Most of the natural gas delivered into Florida enters via the Florida Gas Transmission line, which crosses from Alabama into the panhandle of Florida. The Gulfstream Pipeline, which delivers natural gas from the Gulf Coast underwater through the Gulf of Mexico and into Tampa, is the second largest source of deliveries into Florida. Together, the two lines accounted for 92% of all volumes delivered into Florida in 2017. Southern Natural Gas has three lines that deliver small quantities of natural gas across the northern border of Florida for most months outside of winter, but accounts for only a small portion of total deliveries into the state.
