Keeping pace with the next phase of North American gas operations

This content was originally published by World Pipelines.

David Gross and Anna Ignatova, ION Commodities, and Jay Bhatty, NatGasHub.com, explain why the ability to move data is becoming as important as the ability to move gas across North America’s pipeline network.

North America is in the middle of what many now call a renaissance, even a golden age, for natural gas. Demand is rising, the customer base is broadening, and gas is being asked to do more across the energy system than ever before. But abundance brings its own pressure. The central question is shifting from whether there is enough gas in the market to whether it can be moved through existing pipelines quickly, accurately and efficiently enough to keep up with a market that changes by the hour.

That shift reflects a fundamental change in who is buying gas. For decades, demand came predominantly from residential and commercial users and power generators. That picture has widened considerably. Since the middle of the last decade, LNG exports have created a major new source of demand and tied North American supply far more directly to international prices, global demand and geopolitical events — now one of the clearest structural forces reshaping the continent’s gas balance.

Power generation remains a major and growing call on gas, and a new, power-intensive form of demand is emerging alongside it. Data centres, driven by AI computing, add load distinct from residential, commercial, and industrial consumption and from LNG: it is tied to domestic power infrastructure, grid availability and the pace of computing growth. Where the grid is constrained, operators increasingly look to dedicated or on-site generation, pulling demand closer to those facilities. Coal-to-gas switching adds another pull, with gas the most readily available substitute, reinforcing the need for reliable gas flows.

All of this means that more kinds of customers are competing for flows through the same network — a commercial opportunity, but also a new operational challenge.

A network under strain

Rising demand falls, first and foremost, on the physical pipeline network, but that network is not growing nearly as fast as the demand placed on it. New interstate pipelines remain difficult, slow and contentious to build. While some capacity is being added, particularly intrastate, participants must make better use of the infrastructure that already exists. Pipelines that once carried spare or underutilised capacity are now running closer to full.

As they do, constraints, cuts, and capacity limitations become far more commercially significant, and firms can no longer assume capacity will be available whenever an opportunity arises. With limited new builds, the secondary market for trading and re-leasing capacity is likely to grow — something close to an Airbnb for pipeline space, where shippers resell what they hold to whoever values it most. Like prime real estate, that space is finite and likely to become more expensive, putting upward pressure on tariffs as owners charge more for capacity on peak summer and winter days.

Price risk, geopolitics, and shifting demand all feed into planning and execution, and plans once stable over longer periods are now exposed to intraday change. Pipeline execution — timely, accurate nominations and scheduling — is becoming central to how firms manage volatility, capacity and performance, because small timing gaps or mismatches quickly turn into imbalance exposure, delivery risk or a missed market.

None of this is abstract. In January 2025, ANR Pipeline declared force majeure after an unexpected equipment failure, cutting northbound capacity at several locations by around 300 MMcf/d and warning shippers that already-scheduled volumes would be cut for that day’s evening cycle. This is exactly the kind of event that squeezes teams against fixed-cycle deadlines: positions must be reworked and resubmitted in a narrow, high-pressure window, and any clerical delay incurs a direct cost.

Other days bring different but equally demanding problems. On 13 June 2026, Northern Natural Gas was experiencing numerous capacity constraints across its system simultaneously — dozens of separate constrained paths and allocation points, alongside an open force majeure in one area. Schedulers were forced to juggle bulletin board screens, spreadsheets, and their trading and risk system across all of them. This cumulative manual overload can mean simply reacting too late or booking against quantities already out of date.

The gap between trading and execution

The trouble is that many firms still manage nominations and scheduling through manual, spreadsheet-heavy processes. Those workflows were workable when the market moved more slowly, and capacity was less constrained; they are increasingly inadequate when speed, accuracy and intraday visibility are what matter.

In a typical workflow, the same information is entered two or three times: a scheduler plans in a spreadsheet, keys it into one or more pipeline websites or electronic bulletin boards, then enters it again into an internal CTRM/ETRM system. When a constraint, cut, or schedule change lands, each system must be updated by hand. Every manual handoff is a point where information can drift out of step, where updates may not reach trading, risk, credit or back-office teams quickly enough, and where teams work from different versions of the truth. The consequences are familiar: imbalance risk, missed opportunities, inaccurate positions and avoidable cost.

Much as travellers once had to visit several websites to assemble a single trip before Booking.com, schedulers must move across multiple pipelines, routes, counterparties and time periods to complete what is, in effect, one process, now with far greater complexity and far less margin for delay. The problem is not a lack of expertise, but that these teams are being asked to run a faster, more constrained market through processes that demand too much manual duplication.

Connecting pipeline workflows with CTRMs

A good solution must address these specific problems: less re-keying, a more unified workflow, scheduling and nomination data that flows back into the CTRM/ETRM environment quickly, and greater speed, accuracy, and consistency. This is the gap ION and NatGasHub.com are working to close. NatGasHub.com provides connectivity to 300+ pipelines across North America; ION provides the CTRM/ETRM environment in which trades, positions, risk and commercial data are managed. Together, they link commercial decisions to physical execution.

Rather than moving from spreadsheet to pipeline bulletin board to trading system, firms can connect the CTRM/ETRM environment directly to pipeline workflows: nominations and scheduling become less manual, routine pipeline communication can be automated, updates flow back into the system of record more quickly, and operational data becomes visible to the teams that need it.

This connectivity also changes the purpose of a CTRM/ETRM system. Historically, these platforms were treated mainly as systems of record; that is no longer enough. They must become operational decision-making environments that link commercial intent, physical execution, risk, credit, and back-office processes. The commodity is gas, but the data attached to it are increasingly valuable in their own right. Firms must move both the molecules and the data so that operational reality is reflected in their commercial and risk views.

Spreadsheets won’t disappear – they will keep a role at many firms, but the goal is to remove the most repetitive, time-sensitive and error-prone handoffs. The payoff is faster nominations and scheduling, fewer duplicate entries, lower risk of manual error, faster updates when cuts or constraints occur, and more consistent data across desks. This also unlocks scale: as more gas moves through existing infrastructure, firms cannot keep adding manual effort in proportion to complexity but need workflows that absorb greater volume without a matching rise in burden — making automation a source of resilience as much as efficiency. More broadly, focusing on cleaner, more standardised data will help teams break out of data silos, allowing each member direct access to current pipeline information rather than depending on a colleague for the latest position.

The data foundation for AI

That cleaner data foundation matters far beyond today’s workflows, because it is the precondition for doing AI well. AI will transform how firms analyse, optimise and manage gas operations, speeding up the analysis of market, operational and risk data, helping teams spot patterns and manage exceptions, and increasing in importance as markets become more intraday. But it depends on the foundations above: firms cannot use AI effectively if key data is trapped in spreadsheets, pipeline portals, and disconnected systems, or if nominations, schedules, positions, and constraints are not standardised and up to date.

“Bad data in, bad data out” remains the central challenge. AI does not reduce the need for accurate operational data; it raises the stakes, amplifying incomplete, late or inconsistent data rather than fixing it. As large language models commoditise, the differentiator will increasingly be the quality of the data a firm can feed them. CTRM/ETRM and pipeline workflow systems will be critical because they standardise, cleanse and structure it. The firms best placed to use AI will be those that have already connected their trading, scheduling, pipeline and risk workflows.

Benefits across the desk — and the business

The payoff is felt across the organisation. Traders see whether commercial decisions have actually been executed physically, and respond faster to intraday change. Schedulers spend far less time on duplicate entry — a real opportunity cost recovered — and more on exceptions, constraints and higher-value judgement. Risk teams gain more current visibility into positions and an independent data feed direct from each pipeline, easing their reliance on traders to confirm what is flowing. Credit teams work from more timely, consistent data; back-office teams face fewer breaks between trade capture, scheduling and settlement; and management gains a clearer view of how activity is executed and where bottlenecks lie. Better connectivity improves the flow of information across the business, which is how operational automation becomes commercial performance.

Collaboration over duplication

Nominating, scheduling and communicating with pipelines accurately is something every shipper must do, but it is rarely where firms compete; the commercial edge comes from trading and market decisions, not from the mechanics of execution. That makes it an odd thing for each firm to reinvent in isolation. And in a market this interconnected — where shippers, pipelines and counterparties all rely on the same timely information — smoother, better-connected workflows lift efficiency across the market as a whole, not only inside any one company.

Firms could build these tools themselves, but it would be slow and costly, with the full capital and maintenance burden falling on them rather than shared across an industry. Effective automation also demands deep knowledge of trading, scheduling, nominations, and constraints. Collaboration can help tackle a shared problem faster than firms could alone, reducing operational friction, improving data flow across the gas value chain, and enabling the necessary scalability for the next phase of market growth.

Keeping pace

North American gas is entering a more demanding operating environment. LNG, power, data centres, geopolitical risk and pipeline constraints are all adding volatility and complexity, and existing networks will have to carry greater volumes and more complex flows. As capacity tightens, firms will need to operate faster and more accurately than disconnected systems and manual workflows allow, moving towards more connected, automated and data-rich operating models, with pipeline execution integrated far more closely into trading, risk and operational decisions.

Technology will not remove market volatility or pipeline constraints. What it can do is help firms manage them — scaling operations, reducing errors, improving visibility and responding faster when conditions change. In a market defined by higher volumes, tighter capacity and faster movement, speed, accuracy and data quality have become strategic capabilities, not back-office details. The firms that build them now will be best placed for the next phase of North American gas. Increasingly, moving data accurately and quickly matters as much as moving the gas itself — and connected pipeline execution is not simply a technology upgrade, but a foundation for resilience in a more volatile, capacity-constrained market.