Free Republic

The United States and Canada work well together. The countries share the world’s largest and most comprehensive trade relationship, exchanging more than $2 billion per day in goods and services; the U.S. is Canada’s largest foreign investor and Canada is the third-largest foreign investor in the U.S. The partnership clearly isn’t broken, but it may need some mending as bilateral and international gas trade stands to complicate matters in short order. As with most current global natural gas issues, we must first look back to the shale gas revolution. In 2005 – just as hydraulic fracturing was finding its feet...

Iran’s Hassan Rouhani arrived Friday in Pakistan on a landmark visit, his first since becoming president, at a time when Saudi Arabia is courting Islamabad to increase participation in a new Saudi-led military alliance of mostly Sunni nations, a coalition perceived by Tehran as an anti-Shiite block. Pakistan, a majority Sunni country, has traditionally close ties with Saudi Arabia, which is hostile to Iran, a Shiite power. The kingdom accuses Tehran of supporting Shiite Houthi rebels in Yemen against the internationally recognized president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. […] On the eve of his visit, Rouhani said that “constructive relations with...

American billionaire Warren Buffett, through his Nebraska-based company Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK-A), has acquired a $400 million stake in struggling pipeline company, Kinder Morgan (NYSE: KMI). According to a Berkshire Hathaway US Securities and Exchange Commission filing, the 26.53 million shares of Kinder Morgan are valued at $395.8 million. The purchase adds to Buffett’s oil interests, which includes a recently purchased 14.3 percent stake in oil refiner Phillips 66 at a time when other oil and gas investors are looking for the exit. True to Buffett’s form, the Kinder Morgan purchase came shortly after its stock price fell 53...

A number of recently completed and upcoming natural gas infrastructure projects are expected to increase the reach of natural gas produced in the Marcellus and Utica regions of the Northeastern United States (see map). These projects are intended to transport natural gas from production centers to consuming markets or export terminals. Over the past several years, natural gas production in the Marcellus and Utica areas has grown significantly: their combined growth of 12 billion cubic feet per day since 2011 accounts for 89% of the United States's total growth in natural gas production. The Marcellus and Utica shale plays are...

Natural gas spot prices around the United States are often compared to prices at the Henry Hub in Louisiana. At trading points in and around the Marcellus and Utica shale plays in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio, natural gas prices consistently trade below the Henry Hub national benchmark price. However, the difference between these pricing points and the Henry Hub has narrowed in recent months as new pipeline projects have come online. Most of the natural gas produced in the region is consumed in other areas of the country. With limited infrastructure to deliver natural gas to consumers, the Marcellus...

The U.S. Forest Service has rejected the latest proposed route of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline because of the 42-inch natural gas pipeline's potential damage to the habitat of sensitive animal species protected by two national forests in Virginia and West Virginia. In a letter to the Dominion-led pipeline company on Tuesday, the Forest Service said the proposed route is "inconsistent" with Forest Service plans and commitments to protect the habitats of the Cow Knob salamander, Cheat Mountain salamander and West Virginia northern flying squirrel, as well as the red spruce forest ecosystem in which they live. Consequently, the pipeline project...

orth Dakota regulators granted a route permit Wednesday for what will be the largest crude oil pipeline out of the state's fruitful Bakken oil field, leaving Iowa as the only state left to approve the $3.8 billion Dakota Access Pipeline. Public Service Commission members Julie Fedorchak and Brian Kalk voted to grant the permit for Dakota Access LLC, a subsidiary of Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners, which plans initially to ship up to 450,000 barrels of oil per day on the 1,168-mile pipeline from the Bakken and Three Forks regions in western North Dakota. "This is a massive infrastructure construction project,...

The oil markets are on edge with oil sinking into the $20s per barrel. And last week we reported on one place where oil is already trading in the single-digits. Canada’s bitumen is selling for just $8 per barrel. But even that rock bottom price is higher than what one oil seller earned for a shipment recently. In a bizarre turn of events, Bloomberg reported that Flint Hill Resources, a refining unit owned by the Koch brothers, said that they would purchase sour crude from North Dakota for $-0.50 per barrel. That’s right: a negative price. Oil has become so...

When TransCanada filed its two lawsuits on January 6, company spokesman Mark Cooper said, "TransCanada has undertaken a careful evaluation of the [Obama] Administration's action and believe there has been a clear violation of NAFTA, and the U.S. Constitution, in these circumstances." In the federal lawsuit, filed in Texas, TransCanada is seeking to limit presidential powers to prohibit future presidents from unilaterally rejecting such projects based on how the United States might be perceived by the international community. Environmentalists want to leave untapped oil reserves in the ground and fought successfully over the past seven years to have the president...

The U.S. says it wants to help finance an oil pipeline in Africa. TransCanada took Uncle Sam to court last week to reclaim some of the damage done by the Obama Administration’s multiyear, drawn-out rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline. It may not come up in the litigation, but someone should point out that the same Obama Administration that rejected Keystone seems to have no problem supporting a new oil pipeline project in Africa. That was the story last week out of Kenya, where U.S. Ambassador Robert Godec told Kenya’s energy minister that Washington would help Nairobi raise $18 billion...

The U.S. government says it will help Kenya get the financing it needs to build an $18 billion pipeline from the oil fields in the country's northwest to its southeastern Indian Ocean coast to help it become a net exporter of oil. The pipeline would stretch nearly 500 miles from Lokichar in Kenya’s Great Rift Valley to the coastal town of Lamu, and would be an almost impossibly expensive project for the East African nation. Yet there is enough oil there to make the plan worthwhile. The pan-African financial institution Ecobank Transnational Inc. says it has proven reserves of about...

The Canadian company that proposed the Keystone XL oil pipeline filed a lawsuit over the U.S. government's rejection of the project and announced it plans to file a second legal challenge that will seek more than $15 billion in damages.

North Carolina's citizens could see an annual energy savings of over $134 million in a few years. That's what Joint Legislative Commission on Energy Policy was told regarding the benefits of a large natural gas pipeline project that should be underway soon. The commission met on Tuesday, Jan. 5, and heard an update on the progress of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline that will stretch from West Virginia to near Norfolk and then down into North Carolina. Bruce McKay of Dominion power company said that construction on the nearly $5 billion project could begin later this year and be in service...

TransCanada Corp. said it will submit a claim that US President Barack Obama’s Nov. 6 denial of the company’s Keystone XL crude oil pipeline’s cross-border permit application was arbitrary and unjustified under Section 6 of the North American Free Trade Agreement. The president’s decision also exceeded his power under the US Constitution, the Calgary-based transmission company said in a lawsuit filed on Jan. 6 in the US District Court for Southern Texas’s Houston Division. The actions challenge the Obama administration’s ruling that approving the project’s cross-border permit would not be in the US national interest more than 7 years after...

CALGARY, Alberta, Jan 6 (Reuters) - TransCanada Corp sued the U.S. government in U.S. federal court on Wednesday, alleging President Barack Obama's rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline exceeded his power under the U.S. Constitution. Obama rejected the cross-border crude oil pipeline late last year, seven years after it was first proposed. TransCanada also filed legal action under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), saying the pipeline permit denial was "arbitrary and unjustified." As part of the NAFTA claim, the company was seeking $15 billion.

The battle over the Keystone XL oil pipeline reignited Wednesday afternoon with a lawsuit against the Obama administration charging the White House unfairly, illegally and unconstitutionally killed the project last year. In its lawsuit, TransCanada, the Canadian company proposing the massive project, asserts that President Obama — who blocked Keystone as part of a larger plan to control greenhouse-gas emissions and fight global warming — exceeded his constitutional authority in rejecting the project. The company also filed a separate action claiming the president’s decision was “arbitrary and unjustified” and violated the North American Free Trade Agreement. “TransCanada’s legal actions challenge...

Gas pipes worth 1.8 billion euros ($1.95 billion) are to be left stranded on the shores of the Black Sea after Russia's decision to suspend work on the Turkish Stream pipeline, a potent symbol of Moscow's falling out with Ankara. Russia has set out to punish Turkey after it shot down a Russian warplane in Syria last week, imposing trade sanctions and releasing data it claims proves Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan is involved in illegal oil deals with Islamic State. Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak told reporters on Thursday work on Turkish Stream, a pipeline intended to pump Russian gas...

A company that owns the largest oil pipeline system in Wisconsin is considering construction of a major new pipeline that is likely to rekindle many of the arguments from the Keystone XL debate. Calgary-based Enbridge Inc. told investment analysts in October the company was contemplating building a new line that would start in Superior and travel the length of the state. Executives say they are weighing many factors: an anticipated political fight, the pace of new oil development in Canada and the prospects of higher oil prices. Crude oil's sharp price decline has curtailed many new oil projects, but the...

An energy study released today by Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey concludes that New England does not need additional natural gas pipeline infrastructure to meet peak winter energy demand and that energy efficiency and "demand response" would be the best solution over the next 15 years for both consumers and the environment. The long-anticipated study concludes that New England's power system is not facing an imminent reliability threat through 2030. Healey, who acts as utility ratepayer advocate in Massachusetts, commissioned the study in July. "As we make long-term decisions about our energy future, it's imperative we have the facts," Healey...

Both TransCanada Corp. and city-owned Enmax Corp. confirmed they laid off staff Wednesday as a provincewide economic slowdown blamed on low commodity prices hits pipeline and utility sectors. "This is a difficult time for all of our employees and contractors, as it is for those at many companies right now. These decisions aren't made lightly," said TransCanada spokesman Mark Cooper in an e-mail. He said the company wouldn't provide details on the reductions until they are complete, refusing comment on anonymous social media postings that claim the layoffs are being rolled out over three days, through Friday, and involve hundreds...