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Even though a natural gas pipeline would cut across Canada en route to the Lower 48, Canadian officials should back off while U.S. officials decide whether to offer subsidies on a proposed Alaska pipe, Gov. Frank Murkowski said at a Calgary energy conference last week.

Even though a natural gas pipeline would cut across Canada en route to the Lower 48, Canadian officials should back off while U.S. officials decide whether to offer subsidies on a proposed Alaska pipe, Gov. Frank Murkowski said at a Calgary energy conference this week.

The Sandhills Pipeline, which cuts across 84 miles ofsouth-central North Carolina to link the Williams Transcontinentalinterstate pipeline with a natural gas-fired power plant underconstruction in Richmond County, NC was completed Monday, accordingto Progress Energy Inc.

Calpine will more than double its natural gas reserves and gaina critical transportation link between the United States andwestern Canada after agreeing yesterday to pay $1.2 billion topurchase Calgary-based Encal Energy Ltd., whose core natural gasdrilling operations are in northeastern British Columbia and westcentral Alberta. Power producer Calpine plans a stock-for-stockexchange and would assume Encal’s debt.

In its order (CP99-94) approving the downsized project last week, FERCnoted that FGT had amended its plan and cut facilities for the New SmyrnaBeach Lateral that would have served a trailblazing 514 MW merchant powerplant proposed by Duke Energy and approved by the Florida Public ServiceCommission. The PSC’s certification of the power plant was appealed bythe IOUs in a case that currently is lodged in the state Supreme Court.A Duke spokesman said the company was confident its New Smyrna Beach PowerPlant ultimately would be approved, but it has dropped back from FGT’sPhase IV expansion due to go into service in May, 2001 to its Phase V expansiondue in 2002 (see NGI, Dec. 6).

Florida Gas Transmission received the go-ahead for constructionof its Phase IV expansion to serve investor-owned utilities (IOUs)and industrials in Florida, minus capacity that would have servedthe state’s first merchant power plant.

With just over a year to go before the new Alberta-to-Chicagolink, Alliance Pipeline, goes into service, TransCanada PipeLinesand affiliate Nova Gas Transmission already are feeling the impactof the competition.

With just over a year to go before the new Alberta-to-Chicagolink, Alliance Pipeline, goes into service TransCanada PipeLinesand affiliate Nova Gas Transmission already are feeling the impactof the competition.

El Paso Energy’s Tennessee Gas Pipeline unit agreed in principlewith Pemex Gas Y Petroquimica Basica, a subsidiary of PetroleosMexicanos, to interconnect facilities between the companies’pipelines. The new facilities will be built from the end ofTennessee’s Donna lateral in Hidalgo County, TX, across theinternational border to Pemex’s existing facilities at Reynosa,Mexico. The interconnect is expected to be in service by January1999.