Markets / ERCOT
ERCOT (Texas)
By far the deepest merchant firm-gas queue in the US, and the only one at real scale.
8.8GW
Deliverable gas
60GW
Existing gas
3.5GW
Planned gas
Deliverable = signed interconnection agreement, in service by 2028, merchant (reconciled from the ISO's own queue). Existing and planned from EIA-860M.
ERCOT is the market where the interconnection queue is the clearest supply signal. It is energy-only and merchant, so developers commit through the queue, and a signed, near-term queue position reflects a real merchant commitment. Read the ERCOT gas queue as three different numbers, not one:
- 69.7 GW total queued gas nameplate, the headline study-request figure.
- ~17 GW completion-weighted queued gas, weighting each project by the observed rate at which gas at its stage has historically been built (all owners, not merchant-only).
- 8.8 GW signed, near-term merchant floor: projects with an executed interconnection agreement, a merchant developer, and requested operation by 2028.
The 8.8 GW floor is only 13 percent of the 69.7 GW nameplate, and it sits in roughly fifteen counterparties. The 17 GW figure weights the whole queue by observed completion rates: a signed agreement builds about 60 percent of the time and in-study gas about 15. It estimates how much queued gas will actually be built, of any owner, not a set any single buyer can assemble. The realistic planning numbers sit well below the 69.7 GW headline: about 17 GW likely to complete, and 8.8 GW that also clears the strict, near-term merchant screen.
The signed, near-term gas is also concentrated in place: about 60 percent sits in the West zone (the Permian corridor), and almost none is behind the DFW load pocket, where much of the demand wants to be, so firm power in ERCOT depends as much on location as on supply.
For a buyer, ERCOT is the market where you can strike a bilateral merchant offtake at speed, but the screened pool is thin and countable, so procurement runs as origination against named developers, not as sourcing against a clearing price.
The 8.8 GW figure is a strict merchant screening result. The 17 GW estimate weights all queued gas by observed completion rates (signed IAs build about 60 percent of the time, in-study gas about 15), computed from LBNL project-level outcomes, and is not a measure of merchant-only supply. Neither is an ERCOT classification. See the ERCOT gas queue reconciliation and methodology.