US pipelines follow the market

Todd Shipman of credit rating firm Standard & Poor’s finds that pipeline companies in the US will face more market risk than regulatory risk in the coming year

Driven in recent years by a surfeit of electric power plant construction, the boom in new natural gas pipeline projects and expansions is showing signs of exhaustion. Almost all the new generating capacity added in the US is fired by natural gas, and the massive development effort in that area in the late 1990s and early 2000s prompted forecasts that significant new pipeline investment would be needed. But the party seems to be over, and while pipelines are not hurting nearly as much as merchant