Enbridge Inc. expects its gas transmission business to play a growing role amid booming demand across North America, even as some of its customers express unease over ongoing geopolitical uncertainty.
Speaking to analysts Friday as the company reported its second-quarter earnings, executives touted a number of projects underway to expand its capacity to deliver natural gas to customers in the months ahead.
“We’re hearing from customers in all regions of our footprint, including the U.S. Northeast, Midwest and Southeast. All are looking for additional capacity to support unprecedented power and LNG demand,” said president and CEO Greg Ebel.
Enbridge received “significantly more interest” than initially expected for its proposed expansion of the Algonquin Gas Transmission system, dubbed Project Beacon, he said.
The company recently completed an open season — a process used to formally gauge commercial interest — in the U.S. Northeast for the proposed expansion.
“This is really a great example of how we’re seeing … gas demand across all of our footprint in gas transmission right now for all kinds of requirements,” said Matthew Akman, who leads Enbridge’s gas transmission business.
“Some of that is obviously power and data centres and some of it is just catch up in terms of being behind in building infrastructure. Beacon in New England is probably the best example of that, where everyone knows we’ve needed more gas pipeline capacity into there for quite a while.”
Akman called it a “promising” project that could save more than $1 billion per year for utility customers in New England.
“There’s a real recognition we found in the response to the open season of the need for that capacity, for affordability and reliability to reduce emissions from oil burning power as well, and energy costs generally,” he said.
Enbridge also signed an exclusive option to acquire the TTC Connector Pipeline, which will connect Enbridge’s Tres Palacios Gas Storage facility to Freeport LNG and is expected to enter service by the end of the year.
Meanwhile, its Blackcomb pipeline has begun commissioning and the company sanctioned the Bay Runner Twin pipeline to provide Permian natural gas supply to the Rio Grande LNG facility.
Earlier this month, Enbridge announced it had broken ground on a $4-billion natural gas pipeline expansion in British Columbia. The federal government approved the Sunrise Expansion Program in April.
The project aims to add another 300 million cubic feet per day of transportation capacity to the province’s natural gas transmission system.
“We do expect to punch above our weight in gas transmission,” said Akman.
“Some of that could be chunky, of course, because some of the projects … it’ll depend on the customer timing, but very active conversations going on and we’re optimistic that we’re going to be contributing more than our fair share over the next six to 12 months in gas transmission.”
Enbridge reported a second-quarter profit attributable to common shareholders of $1.4 billion, down from $2.18 billion a year earlier. The company said the profit amounted to 64 cents per share for the quarter ended June 30, down from $1 per share in the same quarter last year.
On an adjusted basis, Enbridge earned 63 cents per share in its latest quarter, down from an adjusted profit of 65 cents per share in the second quarter of 2025.
The company said its secured capital backlog stood at $41 billion. It has sanctioned $9 billion of new projects year-to-date and is on track to meet its targeted $10 billion to $20 billion of new project announcements over the 2026 to 2027 time frame.
Ebel said the company is advancing projects amid a backdrop of volatility in energy markets, supply chain disruptions and uncertainty from ongoing geopolitical developments around the world.
“There’s a fair bit of a challenging backdrop for producers, refiners, exporters, and pipelines to fully commit to large-scale projects, but let’s make no mistake, that is coming because the needs are there,” he said.
“Until we get through that volatility piece, people are going to be focused on, ‘Give me customized solutions that I can utilize and I’ll deal with the bigger solutions as we go forward.’”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 31, 2026.
Companies in this story: (TSX:ENB)
