In service since March, the pipeline provides up to 178 million cubic feet of gas per day, enough to heat every home in Maine. Mass. There, it connects with the Tennessee Gas Pipeline and the U.S. grid that draws natural gas from the Gulf of Mexico and the Midwest. It means natural gas marketers, if they perceive a market exists, can offer competitive prices to smaller industries and homeowners with access to a pipeline. After all those pipelines are connected and filled with pressurized gas from wellheads in the Gulf of Mexico or on the Alberta prairie or off Sable Island, after consumers light their pilot lights and begin to use the gas coming through their meters, white-collar workers with pencil and paper and computers will sort out the gas transactions. ''To operate a gas system, what you sell is pressure,'' said John Flumerfelt of Northern Utilities, the company that distributes gas in the Portland and Lewiston areas. Meters measure the pressure at which gas passes through them, regardless of where it comes from.
Pressure moves the gas from wellhead to homes and businesses.
The two pipes give local distribution companies added opportunities to bring natural gas to smaller industrial customers and to homeowners. The gas the interstate pipelines transport is owned by marketers such as Mobil's natural gas marketing company. The marketers sell gas to businesses and individuals. Local distribution companies, which at this time can sell and distribute gas in Maine, pipe it into a business or home, charging a fee for the use of their pipes. Eventually, the state's local distribution companies will only transport gas.