Fate

While TransCanada Corp. awaits the fate of its proposal in a state-sanctioned process for the development of a pipeline to tap Alaska’s natural gas reserves and ConocoPhillips and BP plc say they’re moving ahead with their similar project, North Slope major ExxonMobil Corp. said last week it is still weighing its options.

While TransCanada Corp. awaits the fate of its proposal in a state-sanctioned process for the development of a pipeline to tap Alaska’s natural gas reserves and ConocoPhillips and BP plc say they’re moving ahead with their similar project, North Slope major ExxonMobil Corp. is still weighing its options.

As politicians in the Bahamas continue to mull over the fate of several long-proposed liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects, AES Corp. was forced to ask FERC this week to push back a deadline for a gas pipeline project from the Bahamas to Florida by four years to January 2011 (see Daily GPI, Sept. 20, 2001 and Jan. 23, 2004).

Faced with a deadening silence from Capitol Hill on the fate of offshore legislation, a group of industrial energy consumers has renewed its call for the Senate and House to quickly reconcile the differences in their two Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) leasing bills so that a legislative package can be approved before Congress adjourns later this month.

While the fate of the Alaska pipeline project remains far from certain and any federal application for its construction could be years away, the federal government is wasting no time preparing for the application process. The Department of Energy (DOE) said Thursday that it has joined 14 other federal departments and agencies in signing an agreement to expedite the permitting and construction of the project.

The fate of many U.S. offshore liquefied natural gas (LNG) import projects was clouded Friday after ConocoPhillips withdrew its application for the 1 Bcf/d Compass Port LNG terminal upon being notified by Alabama Gov. Bob Riley that he intended to veto the application for the offshore Alabama LNG deepwater port.

After more than 16 weeks in the courtroom, the fate of Enron Corp. founder Kenneth Lay and ex-CEO Jeffrey Skilling was in the hands of the jury Wednesday. The two former chiefs face decades in prison if they are convicted.

Jurors weighing the fate of Enron Corp. founder Kenneth Lay and former CEO Jeffrey Skilling will be able to consider whether the men were “deliberately ignorant” and disregarded warnings about possible misconduct at the company, U.S. District Judge Sim Lake ruled this week. Lake will read the 50 pages of instructions, which are used to apply to the facts in the case, to the jury on Monday.

By a quirk of political fate, made possible by a national difference in resource ownership, consumers in Alberta, the chief Canadian producing province, will pay less for natural gas in January than they did in December — and pocket the savings because wholesale prices went up across North America.