Double E Fills Up Fast as Producers Scramble

Summit Midstream hits 1.9 Bcf/d on Double E Pipeline after signing 150 MMcf/d in new long-term deals

6 Jul 2026

Summit Midstream has signed two long-term transport agreements on its Double E Pipeline, lifting total contracted capacity to roughly 1.9 Bcf/d. The company announced the deals on June 8, 2026, adding 150 MMcf/d in committed volume.

An extended open season, running through June 30, produced the agreements. Summit had expected steady interest. What it got instead was a queue of shippers seeking more space than the pipeline could offer.

Talks are continuing for further commitments, and those requests already exceed Double E's available capacity. That gap says something about the state of Permian gas takeaway: it is tightening faster than infrastructure can keep pace.

Output in the basin has climbed alongside oil production, a byproduct of associated gas that comes up whether producers want it or not. Pipeline capacity has not kept up. For producers, a firm transport contract is no longer a background logistics detail. It has become something closer to a competitive necessity.

Filling a pipeline beyond its stated capacity is not typical behaviour for a midstream operator, and it points toward expansion decisions that may not be far off. Whether Summit builds additional capacity itself, or waits for a partner to co-invest, will shape how much of that unmet demand it can eventually capture.

Higher utilisation on Double E tends to mean steadier flow scheduling, a detail that matters to industrial buyers and downstream consumers relying on the system. But the same tightness that draws shippers to Summit also raises the stakes for anyone left without a contract.

None of this is new to the Permian's gas story, but Double E's oversubscription adds a fresh data point: infrastructure investment lagging behind drilling activity. How quickly Summit and its peers respond with new capacity will determine whether that gap narrows or widens over the next few years.