Repsol Not Happy with Spectra’s Atlantic Bridge, Pipeline Reversal
A number of Canadian LNG export facilities being planned for eastern Canada are dependent on obtaining cheap, abundant Marcellus and Utica Shale gas from the U.S. Today we highlight news of a new (to us) entrant into the LNG race, AC LNG (see our companion story). How will Marcellus and Utica Shale gas get to the northern reaches of Canada? Via the Maritimes & Northeast Pipeline LLP (M&NE), a pipeline that stretches from the Boston area all the way to the northern reaches of Nova Scotia. Historically the M&NE pipeline has brought natural gas south, from Canada to the U.S. One of the sources of the gas traveling south on the M&NE is the Canaport LNG facility in New Brunswick–which imports LNG and regassifies it and sends it out over the M&NE. Repsol, a huge Spanish oil company, is the owner of the Canaport facility. So it’s no surprise that Repsol is sounding the alarm and asking the question: What happens to the gas we send south if M&NE reverses its flow and begins sending gas north?…
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Just like a bad case of gout that keeps returning, or perhaps more relevantly like a flareup of herpes, radical protesters keep using illegal actions to oppose the expansion of a compressor station in Rhode Island–Spectra Energy’s Burrillville, RI compressor station. They used illegal actions in August (see 
Let’s talk about optics and the strategies employed by fossil fuel haters. We’ll leave aside our standard argument that people who hate fossil fuels, like natural gas, are wildly hypocritical as their very existence is a direct result of the benefits of fossil fuels. Today we focus on two men who hit life’s lottery–one (younger) became a pediatrician, the other (older) a physics professor. Last week the two chained themselves to the entrance of Spectra Energy’s Burrillville, Rhode Island compressor station to call attention to Spectra’s Algonquin Incremental Market (AIM) project to beef up the compressor station and add pipelines to bring more cheap, abundant, clean-burning Marcellus Shale natural gas to gas-starved Rhode Island and other New England states. The two protesters belong to a fossil fuel hate group called FANG–Fighting Against Natural Gas. Using PVC pipe, chicken wire and (yes) tar, they intertwined their arms to make it extremely difficult to un-knot them. The police had to cut away a section of the fence and cart the fence and the two protesters to the hospital where doctors and nurses had to waste time untangling the mess. The optics, of course, is that FANG wants you to hear about a doctor and a physics professor (supposedly smart people) who put themselves in harm’s way to protest something–so the something must be evil and rotten since these two virtuous “high value” (and smarter than the rest of us) members of society are sounding the alarm. We think you should focus on different optics–the logo/mascot FANG uses on their website (pictured here, taken from their website). A wolf bearing its fangs indicates extreme danger–and a willingness to go to extremes to cause property, and perhaps even bodily, damage. Homeland Security should take note…