FERC Opens Its Environmental Review of a $139 Million Pipeline Expansion Built to Fuel a Texas Panhandle Data Center's Gas Plant

The compressor station Natural Gas Pipeline Company of America wants to build in Moore County, Texas, goes on a site it already owns. The company abandoned the old Compressor Station 112 there in 2013, and nothing from it remains in service ^[3]. Now it wants four new 5,500-horsepower units on the same ground, plus a delivery point with a 24-inch tap in neighboring Deaf Smith County ^[1,3]. On November 5 the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission opened scoping on the project, Docket CP26-581-000, with comments due December 2 ^[1].

This is a FERC pipeline certificate under Section 7(c) of the Natural Gas Act, and the reason it belongs in this column is the customer at the end of the pipe.

What was filed, and what FERC did this week

The pipeline, operated by Kinder Morgan, filed its abbreviated application on September 17 ^[3]. The project combines 321,200 dekatherms a day of new southbound capacity with 228,800 dekatherms a day of capacity it has been holding unsold, to deliver a total of 550,000 dekatherms a day of firm service ^[2,3]. The estimated cost is about $139 million, including contingency, overheads and an allowance for funds used during construction that the company estimates at $5,471,743 ^[3,6]. FERC staff asked for the worksheets behind that last figure on October 2 ^[6].

FERC noticed the application on October 6 and set an October 22 intervention deadline ^[2]. The November 5 scoping notice is the start of the environmental review. Staff will decide after scoping whether to write an environmental assessment or a full environmental impact statement ^[1]. Under the October notice, staff has 90 days from that notice to either finish its review or post a schedule for it ^[2].

Construction would disturb about 56 acres, and Natural would keep about 8.4 acres for operation ^[1]. There is no new mainline pipe in the proposal ^[3].

Who the gas is for

The application gives one shipper for all 550,000 dekatherms: IP Roman III Gas, LLC, which signed a 10-year precedent agreement on April 9, 2026 ^[3]. Natural ran a binding open season from July 2 to July 16 to see whether anyone else wanted capacity, and received no other bids ^[3,4].

Then comes the sentence that brings the case into scope. Natural writes that it “understands that the Project Shipper requires the transportation capacity to deliver natural gas to a new natural gas-fired electric generation facility that will supply electric power to a planned data center being built in Deaf Smith County, Texas” ^[3]. FERC’s scoping notice repeats it, attributed to the pipeline ^[1]. IP Roman’s own filing says only that the capacity supports “a new, natural gas-fired electric generation facility” ^[5].

The record measures this project in dekatherms and horsepower. Nobody in it says how many megawatts the plant would produce or how many the data center would draw, and this column will not convert one into the other. The filings also do not name the data center’s owner. IP Roman’s intervention lists a San Francisco address for its general counsel and copies an intersect.com email address ^[5]; that is as far as the docket goes.

For readers following on-site supply, this is the gas-side half of the arrangement this column covered in Arizona, where Glendale annexed a data center campus and its self-supply gas plant after the state had already certificated the plant. Here the federal piece is the pipe, not the plant.

Who pays for the compressor station

On cost, the pipeline’s case is that the data center’s gas supplier pays and everyone else on the system comes out ahead.

• Rates. IP Roman pays a fixed negotiated reservation rate for the full term ^[3]. As a fallback recourse rate, Natural proposes its existing system rates. Its Exhibit N puts the project’s own cost-based reservation rate at $4.1171, below the $7.3508 maximum tariff rate on the path, and the commodity rate at $0.0014 against $0.0019 ^[3].
• Rolled-in treatment. Because project revenues exceed project costs, Natural asks FERC to presume now that it can fold the facilities into system-wide rates in its next Section 4 rate case. It argues existing shippers “will benefit from it once the Project costs are rolled in” ^[3].
• Fuel. The company’s fuel study calculates a 0.27% retention factor for the project, under the 1.05% tariff factor on the path, and Natural proposes to keep the existing tariff factors ^[3].
• Collateral. If IP Roman does not meet the tariff’s creditworthiness test, it must post security covering project costs in amounts above the usual three months of reservation charges. Natural asks FERC to pre-approve those terms as permissible non-conforming provisions; the schedule itself is not public ^[3].

The risk allocation is the familiar one for a single-customer expansion. The 10-year contract and the collateral are what stand between Natural’s existing shippers and a compressor station built for one plant ^[3]. Whether a 10-year term matches the life of the data center behind it is not a question the Natural Gas Act asks.

Where the sides stand

Natural says the project needs no new mainline, sits mostly on land it owns in fee, and will let it move Midcontinent gas south into the Permian Zone during outages or freeze-offs ^[3]. It argues the benefits “far outweigh any residual adverse effects” ^[3].

IP Roman, the only shipper, calls the project “critical to meeting IP Roman’s natural gas supply needs” and asks for timely issuance of a certificate ^[5].

The one public comment on file opposes approval without a full review. It asks FERC to assess emissions from the four compressor units, cumulative air pollution and greenhouse gases, and to “explain the demonstrated need for the proposed capacity” ^[7]. The filings this column draws on show no protest from a landowner, a county or an environmental group as of the scoping notice.

Trade coverage framed the filing as one more pipeline tied to new gas-fired power demand, without naming the data center ^[8].

What I’m watching

December 2, 2026: scoping comments. The comments decide what the environmental document covers ^[1]. The open question is whether anyone asks FERC to look past the delivery point at the power plant and data center it serves, which the application does not describe beyond the sentence quoted above ^[3].

August 1, 2027: the requested order date. Natural wants a certificate by then to start construction October 1, 2027, and reach service September 1, 2028 ^[3]. Before that, staff’s choice between an environmental assessment and an impact statement will set the pace ^[1,2].