Sep. 1--While settling into its new Downtown headquarters, EQT Corp. is working on a plan to triple the capacity of a natural gas pipeline network that runs hundreds of miles beyond the view from the 32-story tower now known as EQT Plaza.

The last of about 475 employees relocating from a North Shore building started work Monday, including CEO Murry Gerber. Outside, the last of the EQT signs was being installed atop the Liberty Avenue building once occupied by competitor Dominion Resources Inc.

The past few years have been filled with milestones for EQT.

The century-old company that drilled the nation's first commercial natural gas well changed its name in February from Equitable Resources Inc. The change was a way to point out that it's no longer just a utility company, but a major gas producer that transports the fuel through pipelines stretching across four states. And EQT was recently added to the closely watched Standard & Poor's 500 list of stocks.

"We are now one of the largest companies in the region," Gerber said yesterday. Revenue rose 27 percent last year to $1.6 billion.

EQT has amassed 3.4 million acres of leases across the Appalachian Basin where it can drill new natural gas wells, including 400,000 acres in the gas-rich Marcellus Shale region of Pennsylvania and bordering states.

And that ties in with the latest pipeline project.

Later this month, EQT will start a process of gauging other gas producers' interest in its idea to expand capacity on Equitrans, a 1,500-mile network of high-pressure lines that was built starting in the early 1950s.

The project eventually could cost $650 million to $750 million, and run through 2013 or longer.

Equitrans originally was a gathering system that moved fuel produced in rural areas to Pittsburgh's steel plants and other major industries.

Since those uses have dwindled, Gerber said, the system can play a key role in what he sees as a potential new industrial boom for the region -- one in which natural gas produced from the deep Marcellus layer could be used to fuel autos, for instance.

"We are in a funny place here in Pittsburgh. For so long, we're thinking that the pie is shrinking. But we've got to think of ourselves as having bountiful resources and once again, think of how to attract industry to take advantage of that bounty," he said.

The beauty of Equitrans, Gerber said, is that it's an existing pipeline that wouldn't need land acquisitions or a lengthy permitting process -- and it already connects to five major interstate pipelines run by other companies.