Source: The Sun Chronicle

Now the gas industry and supporters among businesses and consumers are countering with a pro-pipeline campaign that paints expanding gas pipelines as essential to maintaining a reliable electricity supply and cutting costs to consumers.

The Consumer Energy Alliance, an amalgam of industrial interests and individuals who support increased energy distribution, recently released a report saying a failure to allow expansion of gas pipelines would jeopardize almost a third of the United States’ generating capacity as other fossil fuel and nuclear plants are retired.

Pipelines, they say, are the safe alternative.

“Pipelines are the safest method of delivering gas,” energy alliance President David Holt said. “That’s been proven.”

Thomas N. Kiley, president and CEO of the Northeast Gas Association, wrote in a recent op-ed in The Sun Chronicle that increased gas supplies have been embraced in the past by environmental groups like the Conservation Law Foundation, and that failure to expand pipeline capacity threatens to undermine the reliability of New England’s power supply.

Expanding pipeline capacity, proponents say, would increase the available supply of gas and save New England electricity customers anywhere from $1.4 billion to $2.5 billion a year.