The headline is 10.7. The working number is 2.2
East Daley published a Northeast supply and demand update on August 19 and did something useful. They raised the production call and they told you which data-center number to ignore.
Marcellus and Utica output is now forecast to grow from an average of 37.2 Bcf per day in 2026 to almost 43.3 Bcf per day through 2030. That is about 6.1 Bcf per day of new Appalachian supply in four years. The monthly update is roughly 1.0 Bcf per day higher than the June forecast. The reason is demand they can see from new data centers, plus the usual coal retirements and a bit of electrification.
They are tracking more than 110 data center projects in the Northeast that could add as much as 67 gigawatts of electric capacity through 2030. If every one of those ran on gas, East Daley puts the burn at about 10.7 Bcf per day. Then they apply a risk filter and get about 2.2 Bcf per day that they actually think shows up. Another 2 Bcf per day or so comes from electrification, industry, and coal-to-gas switching.
Use 2.2 when you write the sentence. Use 10.7 when you want to scare a conference room. They are not the same forecast.
Why Appalachia can grow into it
The Northeast has been the problem child of U.S. gas for a decade. Takeaway constraints. Basis blowouts. Producers who could drill more and did not because the pipe was full. A 6 Bcf per day growth call only works if someone wants the gas and someone can move it.
East Daley points at both. Local power burn from data centers keeps more molecules in the region. Pipeline expansions already proposed across the Lower 48 add up to more than 32 Bcf per day of projects aimed at LNG, power, and citygate load. Not all of those get built. The direction is the point. The biggest U.S. gas demand cycle in a long time is LNG plus power, and the Northeast is trying to claim a piece of the power side.
They also put a continental number on the 2030s. LNG infrastructure in the Lower 48 and Mexico could grow by 45 Bcf per day by 2035 in their case. Gas-fired plants serving data centers could add another 7.6 Bcf per day. Those are not 2026 numbers. They are why a producer in Pennsylvania still has a growth deck while Henry Hub sits under $3.
What this is not
This is not a reason AECO rips next month. Appalachian gas that stays in Virginia or Ohio does not tighten Alberta. If anything, more Northeast self-supply is one more reason U.S. imports from Canada can keep sliding, which is already happening. Canadian pipe into the U.S. printed 3.9 Bcf per day in the week ending August 19, down 15 percent from a year ago.
It is also not a reason to fade Haynesville or the Permian. Different basins, different customers. The Gulf still feeds the ships. The Permian still feeds oil and, now, Costa Azul. Appalachia feeding data centers is a third sink.
How to keep the story clean
A day after Bloomberg counted 99 behind-the-meter plants nationwide, East Daley counted 110 projects in one region and then cut the gas number by 80 percent. That is the difference between a clip and a balance. The demand is real. The timing is slow. The Northeast will grow into it if the plants and the pipes both show up.
For a Canadian reader, file it under "the U.S. is finding new ways to burn its own gas." That is good for U.S. producers. It is not automatically good for a Montney well that still has to get to Kitimat.