Aerial view of the Trinity Gas Storage facility near Bethel, Texas.
Trinity Gas Storage
As announcements for the buildout of natural gas power generation in Texas continue to multiply, the state’s gas supply infrastructure must expand apace. Texans learned by hard experience during 2021’s Winter Storm Uri that their grid is dangerously lacking in dispatchable reserve baseload capacity. Even more to the point, they also learned that regardless of how much such capacity exists on the grid, the gas power plants which provide much of it will fail if the delivery system fails.
A Gas Storage System Spurred By A Storm
“We frankly attribute our rise to development to that storm,” Jim Goetz, CEO of Dallas-based Trinity Gas Storage (TGS), told me in a recent interview. “We had been kind ebbing and flowing with trying to get this project funded and over the finish line when winter storm Uri hit. That event certainly set the table for us, sad to say, as it underscored the necessity for more storage in the state to keep the lights on.”
As I wrote here in January when the company announced commencement of operations, TGS’s main project involves the creation of a large gas storage hub near Bethel, Texas capable of storing up to 24 billion cubic feet of natural gas within depleted underground reservoirs. The storage hub is interconnected to major pipeline systems in the state, allowing the fuel to quickly be routed to not just power plants but also local gas distribution systems to meet home heating needs, adding stability and flexibility to the gas distribution system.
As can be seen in the illustration below, TGS’s reach extends well beyond markets in the northeastern part of the state, with ability to direct gas supplies to more distant demand centers:
System map for Trinity Gas Storage project.
Trinity Gas Storage
An Expanding Gas Trading Hub
Now, that reach is set to expand. On September 26, just nine months after the commencement of operations, TGS announced a key extension of its enterprise with the listing of two new gas trading points on the Intercontinental Exchange (“ICE”), the world’s largest energy derivatives exchange and the leading marketplace for U.S. physical natural gas markets.
The two new locations will be listed as:
- Trinity Gas (inj) – Trinity Gas Storage – Injection (seller’s choice)
- Trinity Gas (w/d) – Trinity Gas Storage – Withdrawal (buyer’s choice)
The new trading points are designed to provide TGS customers with greater, real-time flexibility to move, buy, and sell gas across the company’s system, which is currently linked into pipeline systems owned by major players like Atmos, Momentum, Comstock, and others.
“This important development is yet another growth milestone for Trinity and for the broader market as we work to build the energy infrastructure to ensure a more resilient and reliable grid needed to meet our state and nation’s rapidly rising energy needs,” said Goetz said in the company’s release. “By creating a centralized and transparent trading point and storage facility for transactions at Bethel, we are providing our customers with greater optionality, price discovery, and efficiency, while positioning Trinity as a premier hub for natural gas trading in Texas.”
The establishment of the trading points also sets the stage for an expansion TGS plans to formally roll out later this month. Goetz says that expansion will involve an additional 13 bcf in gas storage capacity, and adding more major pipeline systems to the TGS interconnected network.
The move to add more storage was motivated by customer demand. “When we designed phase one, the capacity quickly sold out, and we had incremental requests for more capacity,” Goetz says. “So, we kind of called an audible during the development of Phase One and modified the design to allow us to bolt on much quicker on the Phase Two expansion.” TGS will be able add the new capacity by drilling additional wells into the same depleted reservoirs it is already using, thus minimizing impacts and avoiding significant downtime.
“We’re set to add four additional compressors, and drill four additional wells,” in the coming months, he says. “We plan to bring that all online in conjunction with the interconnections into additional pipelines owned by Calpine and Enterprise.” The pipeline systems owned by Calpine and Enterprise are two of the most extensive in the state and will significantly extend the reach of the TGS operation. It’s all slated to go operational in August, 2026.
Expanding Gas Deliverability To Meet Rapidly Rising Demand
TGS’s operations fit snugly into the rapidly evolving “build, baby, build” agenda in this second term of President Donald Trump. As I pointed out last November, there will be no revival of the major drilling boom which characterized the first Trump presidency due to evolving market factors and the maturity of the major shale plays. But, after four years of government efforts to slow the oil and gas industry down and impede the expansion of its processing and delivery systems, there is a pent-up appetite for a jump start in that phase of the business. Nowhere is that need more critical than in Texas, where natural gas plays a major role in satisfying the state’s energy needs.
The rapid expansion of AI technologies and their accompanying datacenters only serves to add urgency to the situation. Because those datacenters must remain up and running virtually 100% of the time, the kind of 24/7 generation provided by natural gas is set to become a key tool for meeting their needs. The natural gas trading and distribution hub TGS is operating and now expanding can play a critical role in making it all work.
It all represents a great example of how so many key factors come together just at the right time to make these complex systems work: You need the right geology in the form of the depleted gas reservoirs; the right infrastructure in the network of gas pipelines in close proximity at a specific geographical point; the abundant nearby supply of natural gas; the demand for the product from a variety of customers; a supportive set of public policies; the innovative thinking provided by a developer recognizing the need and moving to meet it; and investors willing to provide the capital needed to fund it.
No state in the country is more able to host and facilitate all those various key elements coming together quite like Texas is. Some of it is pure luck and the blessing of abundant natural gas resources that simply do not exist in many parts of the country: The rest is the result of human ingenuity.
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