Dominion and its partners, which include Duke Energy, have said the prime driver of the project is a demand for natural gas from utilities in Virginia and North Carolina that have already signed contracts for the vast majority of the 1.5 billion cubic feet of gas a day that developers have said the pipeline will carry.

Weekley’s remarks mean that either most of the gas the pipeline will carry won’t go to Virginia or North Carolina or it can carry more gas than previously stated.

According to Dominion spokesman Aaron Ruby, the answer is the latter. And he stressed that no decisions have been made to expand the pipeline at this point.

Ruby said the pipeline could carry up to 2 billion cubic feet of natural gas by adding new compressor stations, beefing up the horsepower of existing stations or a combination of the two. Any additional capacity would require putting new pipe in the ground.

“It’s way too premature to get into that because this is all hypothetical. Our focus right now is completing the project as proposed so we can serve the urgent needs of public utilities in Virginia and North Carolina,” Ruby said.

Ruby added that the contracts for capacity on the pipeline “are 20-year binding contracts.”