INTERVIEW: Trinity Gas Storage plans hub to link Haynesville supply, power demand

Trinity Gas Storage LLC plans to develop a hub at its site in East Texas to link increasing production in the Western Haynesville Shale to rising power-sector gas demand, CEO Jim Goetz said in an interview.

The company placed the 13 billion cubic feet second phase of its facility in Anderson County, Texas, into service on Aug. 1, taking total working gas capacity at the site to 37 Bcf. The first phase of the depleted reservoir facility entered service in January 2025.

It plans to develop a full-size manifold header system at the site, "allowing us to wheel gas between the pipelines within the intrastate market there," Goetz told Platts, part of S&P Global Energy.

Goetz said supply in the region was rising as companies like Comstock Resources Inc., Expand Energy Corp., Citadel LLC, Mitsui & Co. Ltd, and Mitsubishi Corp. have all amassed large positions in the Western Haynesville. "We see a really good avenue for those suppliers, those producers to bring gas to a single location, which can then be the marketplace for them."

On the demand side, Goetz pointed to new power generation closer to the Trinity site.

"We have NextEra building what may be the largest natural gas-fired power plant in the US on our property, essentially a nine-iron from us," Goetz said, referring to a 5.2 GW project in Anderson County that was announced March 20 as part of the $550 billion US-Japan energy trade agreement. "They're well underway and securing the remaining rights and road permits and the like to commence construction," Goetz said. Comstock will supply gas to the facility, with volumes potentially reaching up to 1 billion cubic feet per day by 2031, Comstock said March 23.

Calpine LLC recently brought online a new peaking facility near its Freestone Energy Center, while CyrusOne Inc. is constructing a data center adjacent to the plant, Goetz said. The peaking unit has a capacity of 460 MW and came online in April 2026, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence data.

The second phase of the Trinity Gas Storage project included an interconnect with Calpine's gas yard, which is a set of meters connecting the Freestone Energy Center to pipeline systems of Atmos Energy Corp, Energy Transfer LP, Momentum Midstream LLC and Enterprise Products Partners LP, Goetz said. It also included a direct interconnect with Enterprise, which will be able to send gas from the interconnect east or west, "basically to or from Carthage," he said.

Trinity's first phase already had direct interconnects with the Atmos and Momentum systems, and the tailgate of Comstock's Pinnacle gas processing plant, Goetz said. The interconnects with Atmos and Momentum "give us versatility within the intrastate markets because they are both so well interconnected," Goetz said.

Remaining capacity

Trinity has contracted out 10 Bcf of the phase 2 capacity and aims to contract out the remaining 3 Bcf in the spring, Goetz said.

"We have substantially more demand for the remaining 3 Bcf than the capacity that is available," Goetz said. "So we don't foresee any issues getting that ironed out come Q1 next year."

Trinity is actively negotiating with two data centers, Goetz said. Data centers are increasingly interested in acquiring capacity because of their unusually high reliability requirements of 'five nines' or 99.999%. Developers are taking out multiple pipeline interconnect agreements to provide redundant transportation and coupling them with gas storage to ensure certainty of supply, Goetz said.

The company is also looking at further capacity expansions of the site. It is doing "substantial reservoir engineering work to understand what type of expansion we can get out of the reservoir... that's kind of stay tuned," Goetz said. "Maybe after our next withdrawal season, we'll have sufficient data to make an announcement then with respect to kind of expanding capacity within Trinity."

The company brought the second phase of the project online quickly, after reaching final investment decision in December 2025. It was able to do so because it purchased the long-lead items before reaching FID, Goetz said. "The demand was so large that we were compelled to order the compression right away."

The waiting time for compression is about two years, and "is not getting better at all," Goetz said. "I think in part because the demand for the engines, which can be used for power generation or otherwise, is so high." Goetz also sees bottlenecks developing for other components; the lead times for some high-pressure valves can be 18 months or higher, he said.