TC Energy

A subsidiary of Bridger Pipeline is planning a 36-inch-diameter crude oil pipeline that would move up to 550 Mb/d of Canadian barrels 645 miles from the U.S.-Canada border to Guernsey, WY. The idea is to push crude south via existing rights-of-way, possibly reviving parts of Keystone XL in Alberta. 

Mexico’s still-rising demand for U.S.-sourced natural gas — and new pipelines to deliver it — has been driven by the buildout of new power plants and, more recently, by planned LNG exports. Today, we discuss more private-sector midstreamers and the new gas demand that may bring them new opportunities.

In Mexico, state-owned players like Cenagas and CFE continue to play central roles in planning and underpinning the development of natural gas pipelines. At the same time, however, Mexico has leveraged the participation of a handful of private-sector companies that have built a significant share of the newer pipelines there. 

New U.S. LNG export projects battling rising labor and equipment costs and/or financing woes have one more thing to worry about that the first wave of projects didn’t: ensuring the feedgas supply will be there when they need it. Bottlenecks have already developed for moving natural gas volumes to the Louisiana coast, where the bulk of future export capacity will be sited. As more liquefaction capacity is built out and more export projects are greenlighted, a lot more pipeline capacity will be needed to move feedgas supply from the Haynesville and other supply basins into southern Louisiana and across the last mile to the terminals. In today’s RBN blog, we conclude our roundup of pipeline expansions in the Bayou State that would help ease transportation constraints and balance the market, this time with a look at announced-but-yet-to-be sanctioned greenfield pipeline expansions, along with an update on their associated export projects.

The U.S. won’t add new LNG export capacity this year for the first time since it became an exporter in 2016. But that lull is not going to last long. At least five facilities are under construction and due for completion in the next few years, several other expansions were recently sanctioned, and there are more final investment decisions (FIDs) on the way. With export development expected to accelerate in the coming years, the race to debottleneck feedgas pipeline routes is on. More natural gas pipeline capacity will be needed, particularly for moving gas supply to the Louisiana coast, where the bulk of new liquefaction will be sited. In today’s RBN blog, we resume our series on the pipeline expansions targeting LNG export demand, this time highlighting TC Energy’s Gillis Access Project and how it fits into the Louisiana LNG market picture.

U.S. presidential transitions often bring policy changes, but few have been as dramatic and swift as the shift in energy policy that came with President Biden’s inauguration in January. Among his first acts after being sworn in was the signing of an executive order that revoked the Presidential Permit for TC Energy’s long-planned Keystone XL crude oil pipeline. Among other impacts, the move put on ice more than one-third of the Canadian midstream giant’s C$37 billion capital spending program for the 2021-24 period and unraveled TC Energy’s plan to balance its natural-gas-weighted pipeline portfolio with more crude oil pipes. So, what’s next for the midstreamer now that KXL is a no-go? In today’s blog, we’ll discuss highlights from our new Spotlight report on TC Energy which lays out how the company arrived at this juncture and where it goes from here.

Last summer, Alberta natural gas prices staged a remarkable turnaround from the dismal lows and extreme volatility experienced the prior three summers. The price rise is widely credited to a temporary gas flow mechanism put in place by the operator of Alberta’s gas pipeline grid to combat congestion and oversupply issues associated with construction and maintenance during the summer of 2020. However, this temporary mechanism was just that — temporary — and will not be reinstated this summer. Without it, there is concern among Western Canadian gas producers that the weakness and volatility in gas prices seen during past summers might return this year. With warmer weather on the horizon, today we consider these issues and the potential for renewed price weakness in the Alberta natural gas market this year.

Natural gas production has been growing in Western Canada in recent years with an increasing share of that supply coming from core areas of activity within the Montney and Duvernay plays. This tighter focus has forced TC Energy to rework and expand its giant Nova Gas Transmission Limited pipeline system, a network that originally gathered gas supplies across a much larger geographic footprint. The problem is, it took far longer than expected for the latest round of NGTL expansions to win final approval from Canadian regulators. Today, we review the next phase of the pipeline’s system development, and what the regulatory delay might mean for Western Canada’s gas market.

For most of the past three years, Western Canadian producers have had to deal with crude oil pipeline constraints — takeaway-capacity shortfalls serious enough to spur huge price discounts for the region’s benchmark Western Canadian Select (WCS) that are sufficient to support the higher cost of crude-by-rail alternatives. But things are changing, and fast. WCS prices are at or near historic lows — low enough to convince a number of producers to rein in their capital spending and production. Crude-by-rail use is down, and there’s even space available on the usually maxed-out Enbridge Mainline system, the region’s primary pipeline egress. And wouldn’t you know it, just as production is slipping and constraints are easing, real progress is being made on three big pipeline projects that had long been in limbo: the Line 3 Expansion, the Trans Mountain Expansion (TMX) and Keystone XL. Today, we provide an update on Western Canadian crude takeaway capacity and examine whether the region may — irony of ironies — end up with too much.