Pipeline Topics

02/01/2012

Building a major pipeline to carry stranded North Slope natural gas to market would boost the number of jobs and wealth in Alaska. But the impact would be muted compared to the economic upheaval from building the trans-Alaska oil pipeline 35 years ago.

That's a key conclusion of a draft economic analysis, prepared by the gas line...

01/11/2012

This month, a small team of federal officials will visit a handful of Alaska villages to discuss with local tribal leaders the proposed multibillion-dollar gas pipeline project – one government to another.

The meetings – or consultations, as they're called – stem from an 18-year-old presidential mandate for federal agencies to engage Native American tribes, and to listen and consider their concerns before taking actions that affect the tribes.

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12/21/2011

REVISED Jan. 17, 2012 - A multimillion-dollar effort is moving ahead to understand how the proposed Alaska gas pipeline project would change the physical, economic, social and cultural environments along the line's path through the state.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is leading the environmental review of the $32 billion to $41 billion project that would pipe 4.5 billion cubic feet...

11/29/2011

About 15 years ago, a group of exasperated Alberta business executives conceived a natural gas pipeline idea so radical that it shook up the old order in Western Canada's energy business and still reverberates today.

The group comprised Alberta and British Columbia natural gas producers.

Simply put, they wanted to make more money. They believed the price they were getting for their gas at the wellhead was too low. There wasn't enough pipeline capacity to move the...

11/18/2011

Most of TransCanada/ExxonMobil's proposed 1,717-mile natural gas pipeline from Alaska's North Slope would be built in Canada, where it faces government scrutiny remarkably similar to the oversight under way in the United States.

Canadian government agencies – federal, provincial and territorial – still must issue final approvals for the pipeline project.

They are empowered to ensure the pipeline is designed, constructed and operated safely.

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11/01/2011

Buyers of natural gas pay a vastly lower price in Europe than they pay in Japan. In the United States, the natural gas price is vastly lower yet. This wild disparity in prices is a relatively new phenomenon. As recently as three years ago global natural gas prices seemed as tightly wound as a suspension bridge cable. What happened in 2008 to break apart the predictable pattern of natural gas pricing? What forces could bring the prices back together again? Or is today's disparity the new norm...

10/17/2011

Driving much of the discussion at a liquefied natural gas conference in London were two relatively recent events that have rattled how the global LNG industry views its short-term future.

The events help explain the unusual LNG pricing trends of late, underscore some of the volatile dynamics of supply and demand, and amplify the uncertainty forecasters have of their own predictions.

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09/06/2011

The global liquefied natural gas industry has been marked in recent years by a multibillion-dollar build-out, new suppliers, fresh markets, a new dominant player and an emerging rival.

In the last five years, the volume of LNG available on the market has jumped 50 percent, a growth rate that's three times faster than the overall growth of world gas production.

Qatar, with a mighty 900 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves, swept Indonesia off the LNG production throne as...

08/15/2011

Ideas for moving Prudhoe Bay's natural gas bounty off Alaska's North Slope are as plentiful as cottonwood seed in the June air.

Some are modest: Truck small amounts of gas to Fairbanks consumers.

Some are epic: Pipe massive amounts to Lower 48 consumers - the most expensive North American private-sector construction project ever.

Some are pinned to visions of an Alaska energy utopia, where gas for local use is plentiful and relatively cheap, the oil industry reawakens to...

08/08/2011

Squads of scientists this summer have joined the caribou and Dall sheep, eiders and eagles, moose and muskrat, salmon and grayling that inhabit the proposed natural gas pipeline route through Alaska.

The scientists are there to catalog, cross-check and verify the exact nature of that route - from the animals to the permafrost and faults - before the first trench can be carved for the major pipeline from Alaska through Canada.

The data gathering this...