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Growing U.S. tight oil production, particularly from the Bakken oil play, threatens to squeeze the margins of Canadian oil sands projects, and could result in unsanctioned oil sands projects being delayed or cancelled due to the potential for wide and volatile price differentials, according to a May 2012 report by Wood Mackenzie. The massive growth of North American tight oil production, particularly North Dakota's Bakken play, is placing pressure, and competing directly with Canadian barrels moving south, according to the report. This problem will only get worse as Wood Mackenzie forecasts that North Dakota's Bakken production will double to 1.2...

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin on the future of oil exploration in the U.S. and the importance of the Keystone Pipeline.

A crude oil pipeline that will run 485 miles from Cushing, Okla., to Southeast Texas should be under construction by late summer and operational in late 2013. TransCanada, the builder of the Keystone Pipeline, is looking for workers, vendors and suppliers to help support the $2.3 billion project. On Tuesday, TransCanada conducted a registration workshop in Beaumont, similar to others it has sponsored in other areas along the route. "We'll need supplies, goods and services," TransCanada spokesman Jim Prescott said, listing fuel, tires, oil and welding sticks. And, he said, "We anticipate it will create about 4,000 direct construction jobs...

If new bitumen pipelines are not built to the West Coast, Alberta must opt for both new local upgrading projects, and more capacity to produce refined products which can be more easily shipped and exported, a global energy expert said Thursday. “If Northern Gateway doesn’t go ahead, or Kinder Morgan’s TransMountain to Vancouver, Alberta could produce more synthetic crude to move east to Sarnia and beyond. Another option is more local refining, and certainly there is strong local demand for diesel,” said Robert Johnston, director of global energy and natural resources for the Eurasia Group, at the PricewaterhouseCoopers Energy Visions...

First oil will flow south to refiners in the U.S. Gulf Coast this weekend on the Seaway pipeline, providing slight relief to bloated storage in the Midwest and to discounted Canadian crude. Enbridge Inc. and partner Enterprise Products Partners said Thursday the 150,000 barrel-per-day line reversal was complete, and oil from Cushing, Oklahoma would be arriving in Houston, Texas within two weeks. Markets responded to the news by shrinking the discount of West Texas Intermediate to Europe’s Brent by $2 to approximately $14 US per barrel on visions of slowly debottlenecking record amounts of oil at Cushing. The difference had...

Mitt Romney is vowing to approve TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline on his first day on the job if elected U.S. president in November. In a campaign ad unveiled on Friday, the presumptive Republican nominee asks voters to imagine Day 1 of his presidency, and lists Keystone as a top priority. "Day One, President Romney immediately approves the Keystone pipeline, creating thousands of jobs that Obama blocked," the ad's narrator says. Romney has been maligning U.S. President Barack Obama for months for failing to give the green light to Keystone. The president rejected the $7 billion pipeline earlier this year, but...

The U.S. oil boom has created a glut of crude in Cushing, Okla., a major oil storage hub. This sign dubs the city the "Pipeline Crossroads of the World." For years, Cushing, Okla., has been on the receiving end of a 500-mile pipeline funneling oil from the Gulf of Mexico to the American heartland.Starting this weekend, that pipeline will start moving crude in the other direction. That flow reversal could soon have implications at gas pumps around the country."For 40 years, crude oil flowed north," says Philip Verleger, a visiting fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. "Today, oil...

With the planned Nabucco natural gas pipeline in southern Europe hitting snag after snag, Russian natural gas giant Gazprom is considering the construction of a second Baltic Sea pipeline to go with the just-finished Nord Stream. With unconventional natural gas from the US flooding the market, however, the strategy is not without risk. … Indeed, it is beginning to look as though the erstwhile competition between the two pipelines has been overwhelmingly won by Nord Stream. (Gerhardt) Schröder's team has just decided to expand the Baltic Sea pipeline's capacity. The owners, Gazprom, E.on-Ruhrgas, Wintershall, Gaz de France and the Dutch...

As new data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) show, the race is on to add new domestic natural gas transmission pipeline and storage capacity. Surging production from inland shale gas and tight sand basins is contributing to this demand for new capacity. "Shale gas is creating a big stress on the U.S. pipeline spider web," said Chris Faulkner, CEO of Breitling Oil and Gas. The Dallas-based exploration and production company operates in the Haynesville, Eagle Ford, Marcellus and Granite Wash shale plays. "With shale gas impacting supply as a 47-percent component by 2035, I believe the current state...

The United Arab Emirates embassy in the U.S. a little while ago bragged in a tweet that "UAE participated with US in 5 coalition actions in 20 years: Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Bosnia-Kosovo, Gulf War." U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor in response poses the question, "Does that possibly explain why the U.S. Agency for International Development is planning to build a 47 km. pipeline extension in the former Soviet republic of Georgia -- a project whose goal is to promote the UAE-owned Poti Free Industrial Zone near the Black Sea?" Just a thought. Related: "U.S.-Financed Pipeline Benefiting UAE Royal Family Moves...

The U.S is moving forward with plans to help finance a gas pipeline-extension benefiting United Arab Emirate royals. As U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor reported late last year, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) intends to provide an unspecified level of financial support to build the 47 kilometer natural-gas pipeline in the former Soviet republic of Georgia. The agency claims that the Kutaisi-Abasha project, as it is known, will provide “energy security” in the region. The endeavor as originally described was to promote the development of the Poti Free Industrial Zone on the Black Sea coast, “and secure power...

WASHINGTON — TransCanada Corp. on Friday reapplied to the U.S. State Department for a presidential permit to build the controversial Keystone XL oilsands pipeline, immediately triggering a new fight with opponents over the scope of a coming environmental impact study into the project. In an interview with Postmedia News, TransCanada executive Alex Pourbaix said the Calgary-based company expects the Obama administration’s review of Keystone XL to be limited to the new rerouted portion of the pipeline through Nebraska. “Certainly our expectation is that the only required new review would be on the actual reroute itself . . . What we...

THE CASE FOR ultimately approving the Keystone XL pipeline — always strong — has grown stronger. A key environmentalist argument against Keystone XL has been that the project would encourage the extraction of bitumen, a particularly dirty oil-like substance, from the “oil sands” in Alberta. If activists could “shut in” Canadian bitumen, limiting the ability of oil companies to sell the product, they argued, perhaps petroleum firms wouldn’t be able to fully develop the oil sands. That hope always was unrealistic, and a recent announcement from Kinder Morgan, another pipeline company, illustrates why. The firm wants to nearly triple the...

Republicans have held two important votes on the Keystone XL pipeline this year, forcing Barack Obama and Democrats to take positions opposed to its construction. As the elections approach and gas prices keep rising, though, fewer Democrats seem ready to go on record to back Obama. The most recent vote produced a veto-proof majority in the House in favor of approval for the Keystone XL pipeline, and Byron York writes that the opposition in the Senate might be weakening as well: When the House voted on the pipeline in July of last year, 47 Democrats broke with the president. Now...

The most recent vote produced a veto-proof majority in the House in favor of approval for the Keystone XL pipeline, and Byron York writes that the opposition in the Senate might be weakening as well. That’s not the only wave of disapproval coming from his fellow Democrats these days, either. The Hill reports that recent remarks by Barney Frank on ObamaCare has opened the floodgates of criticism … just as constituents start paying attention to the upcoming election: An increasing number of Democrats are taking potshots at President Obama’s healthcare law ahead of a Supreme Court decision that could overturn...

"We're right around the corner from actually passing it," says a well-informed Senate source. "Two-hundred-ninety-three votes in the House is a gigantic number. People want this thing." The president didn't help his cause when he staged an odd photo-op last month, delivering a speech in Cushing, Oklahoma in front of huge stockpiles of pipes. Obama sang the praises of pipelines -- "It is critical that we make pipeline infrastructure a top priority," he said -- and made a big deal of his approval of a section of domestic pipeline that didn't need his approval. But he remained unyielding on Keystone....

The House, defying a White House veto threat, passed GOP legislation Wednesday that extends transportation program funding through September and mandates construction of a controversial oil pipeline from Canada to Gulf Coast refineries. All but 14 Republicans, with support from 69 Democrats, voted 293-127 for legislation that falls far short of Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) earlier plan to move a sweeping five-year, $260 billion package. But Boehner’s retreat serves two crucial tactical and political purposes for the Speaker. It enables talks with the Senate on the highway bill and keeps the Keystone pipeline – which is at the heart of...

Kinder Morgan Energy Partners is throwing a $5 billion solution at Canada’s growing supply of stranded oil, announcing Thursday that it plans to nearly triple the capacity of a pipeline that would kick open the door to Asia. The project is one of the most expensive Kinder Morgan has undertaken, due in part to the terrain and environments through which the project would run, said Emily Mir, a spokeswoman for the company. The Houston-based pipeline giant said it will expand its Trans Mountain pipeline system, which traverses the Canadian Rockies en route from Edmonton, Alberta, to the Vancouver area of...

Energy Policy: The administration claims there's no "silver bullet" to lower gas prices and that they've kept rising in the face of higher domestic production, as if the law of supply and demand has suddenly been repealed. It hasn't, and increased production on private and state lands doesn't blunt the impact on prices when 94% of federal onshore lands and 97% of federal offshore lands are off-limits to oil and gas drilling. A key factor in gas prices is and always has been future supplies and potential disruptions to those supplies. Another is the fact that we are the only...

The cost of crude oil to refiners varies across regions based on the different types of crude oil available to refiners and transportation bottlenecks in that region. This cost, called the refiner acquisition cost, also includes transportation and other fees paid by the refiner. Historically, there has been little variation across regions. From 2004 through 2009, the average of the annual spread between the most expensive and least expensive regional refiner acquisition cost was $5.52 per barrel. In 2010, the spread was $7.46 per barrel, and in 2011, it widened dramatically to $23.78 per barrel. The regional variation in the...