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CALGARY — The chief executive of TC Energy Corp. says the Democratic sweep in this week’s U.S. midterm elections does not necessarily signal a wholesale rejection of new data centre development as the Calgary-based company announced it’s moving ahead with natural gas pipeline expansions aimed at serving booming power demand south of the border.
On Thursday, the company said it’s moving ahead with a US$1.8-billion expansion to the Crossroads natural gas pipeline in Indiana and Ohio, which serves various Midwest markets. It also approved an expansion to its Northern Border system, which delivers Canadian gas into the region, for which TC’s equity contribution is US$100 million. Both are aimed at serving growing power demand, including from data centres, in the U.S. Midwest.
“There’s maybe a presumption that a blue wave means that there is a uniform opposition to data centres, but that is not at all the case. It is really bespoke on a state-by-state basis,” François Poirier said in an interview after the company reported third-quarter results.
Also on Thursday, the company said it’s moving ahead with an expansion to its ANR pipeline, which ships gas from the southern United States to the U.S. Midwest, to support coal-to-gas power conversion at a cost of US$100 million. And it approved an expansion to the Coastal Gas Link pipeline serving the LNG Canada gas export facility in Kitimat, B.C. Its share of committed equity is $250 million.
TC now has $25 billion in approved projects in the hopper, along with $6 billion pending approval and more than $40 billion in earlier-stage opportunities.
Several local ballot initiatives to pause data centre development passed in Tuesday’s U.S. midterms, and candidates pledging moratoriums won gubernatorial races in Texas and Ohio. Data centres, which house the computing hardware needed to power a wide variety of tech applications, are nothing new. But with the advent of artificial intelligence, they have grown to enormous scales, sometimes drawing the same amount of power as a whole city.
“We think stakeholders’ concerns are quite valid,” Poirier said, citing noise, pollution, water use and an increase in utility bills. “It’s incumbent on developers to be able to address all those issues.”
Some hyperscale data centre developers have been partnering with power generators for exclusive “behind the fence” energy supply rather than drawing from the public grid. So far, TC Energy has not engaged in such a deal, but has been expanding its natural gas pipeline network in areas of the United States that have seen a surge in data centre development.
“We try and do an early triage because we’re inundated with opportunities to invest,” Poirier said. One of the first questions TC asks for any of its projects is, how challenging is it to obtain permitting?
Some states, like Wisconsin for example, have done a good job setting out parameters early-on for developers to abide by, and have reaped the economic rewards, Poirier said.
“Our focus in the U.S. is predominantly in the Midwest on supplying natural gas for power generation for data centres, and that happens to be a region of the country where the acceptance level is better,” he said.
“You’re not seeing us develop projects in Massachusetts or in New York or in California, for that matter. We’re sticking to the Midwest and then the corridor from the Appalachia all the way down to the Gulf Coast because the states are generally supportive of pipeline development.”
Texas, the mid-Atlantic and northeast are trickier. As a federally regulated company in the United States, a change in state-level leadership doesn’t have a big impact on most of the permitting TC needs to build pipelines.
Earlier in the day, TC said its net income attributable to common shares totalled $1.03 billion or 98 cents per share for the quarter ended Sept. 30, up from $609 million or 58 cents per share a year earlier when it recorded a loss of $204 million from discontinued operations.
Comparable earnings per share for the quarter amounted to 94 cents, up from 77 cents per share in the third quarter of 2025.
Revenue for the quarter totalled $4.03 billion, up from $3.70 billion.
In its outlook for the year, TC Energy says it now expects comparable earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization in a range of $11.8 billion to $12 billion. The revised outlook compared with earlier expectations for a range of $11.6 billion to $11.8 billion.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2026.
Companies in this story: (TSX:TRP)
Lauren Krugel, The Canadian Press
