(WSJ 4/11/2012) -Electricity Rates Slide and Coal Feels the Heat as Natural-Gas Prices Plunge. Plummeting natural-gas prices are pushing U.S. industries into virgin terrain, even beginning to dislodge cheap Western coal from its once-untouchable perch as the nation's favorite fuel for power production. On Tuesday, natural-gas futures settled at $2.03 per million British thermal units—just a hint above $2, the lowest price since January 2002.
By RUSSELL GOLD, REBECCA SMITH and DANIEL GILBERT
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(Reuters 3/29/2012) - Even as big U.S. oil pipelines invest billions of dollars to ship booming oil production south from Canada and North Dakota, a new race is underway in the opposite direction.
Two of the country's biggest pipelines, both now underutilized, are competing to pump a special type of ultra light oil from the Gulf Coast to the Midwest, betting on growing demand from Canadian producers for the "diluent" necessary to get their heavy oil sands bitumen flowing to refiners.
The race between the Capline and Explorer lines, which may play out over years rather than...
(WSJ 3/27/2012) - Two major energy companies are planning to build new pipelines that will move as much as 850,000 barrels of crude oil a day from Canada to refineries along the Gulf Coast by mid-2014, in the latest effort to cope with a surge of oil production in North America.
The separate projects, planned by Houston-based Enterprise Products Partners LP and Enbridge Inc. of Calgary, will compete with TransCanada Corp.'s proposed Keystone XL pipeline, a massive project to move crude from the oil sands of Alberta to U.S. refineries.
Enbridge and Enterprise already operate...
