Brunswick

An eastern contender stepped forward Thursday to be the pioneer of natural gas hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in New Brunswick under a new regulation that enables regional exemptions to be granted from the province’s five-year-old ban.

Ownership of New Brunswick’s natural gas distribution franchise is changing hands in a C$331 million (US$265 million) sale announced Tuesday by Calgary-based Enbridge Inc. The buyer — Liberty Utilities (Canada) LP, a subsidiary of Oakville, ON-based Algonquin Power & Utilities Corp. — added that a C$5 million (US$4 million) service expansion program will begin after the deal’s scheduled close in first-half 2019. Under Enbridge ownership the franchise, New Brunswick Gas, arranged for imports from the eastern United States for its 12,000 customers in 12 communities to replace Nova Scotia offshore wells that are depleted and shutting down. Enbridge retains a 78% ownership interest in the import route, Maritimes & Northeast Pipeline. The Calgary gas and oil transportation conglomerate described the New Brunswick deal as part of continuing asset sales triggered by its C$37 billion (US$28 billion) takeover of Houston-based Spectra Energy in 2016.

A crack opened Friday in provincial policy walls that have kept unconventional natural gas production out of Eastern Canada, when the New Brunswick legislature voted in favor of at least considering making an exception for a rich drilling target.

Higher bills are starting to arrive in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick after the provinces decided to drop out of natural gas production byenacting bansagainst the unconventional development that could have replaced depleted offshore supplies.

Canada will have one less pipeline, and a depleted source of natural gas exports to the U.S. Northeast will vanish next year, when the Sable Offshore Energy Project (SOEP) begins winding down its operations.

A target date of 2021 has been set to eliminate the last trace of Canada’s depleted 19-year-old Atlantic natural gas production network on the seafloor near Sable Island and the east coast of Nova Scotia.

Energy free trade with Canada enabled U.S. natural gas exporters to make sales worth C$51.4 billion ($41 billion) since the onset of high-volume unconventional production a decade ago, according to the federal government in Ottawa.

The aging mainstay of Atlantic natural gas production, the Sable Offshore Energy Project (SOEP), is signaling its days as a supplier for New England and Maritime Canada are numbered by discarding its shipping services.

Canada’s Atlantic provinces are sliding into dependence on imports after banning horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (fracking) to tap their natural gas deposits, said an industry- and government-supported agency.