Stumbling

The stumbling block to more offshore oil and natural gas drilling is not the environment or the economy, but rather it’s the view of platforms from shorelines, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) told a House hearing Tuesday. He recommended that lawmakers require companies to make their rigs more eye appealing, as is already being done in some coastal communities in California.

TransCanada Corp. has settled some old business that could have been a stumbling block to development of a long-haul pipeline to carry Alaska North Slope natural gas to Lower 48 markets. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission recognized the surrender of a certificate issued in 1977 to TransCanada subsidiary Alaskan Northwest Natural Gas Transportation Co. In the opinion of some, that certificate for a gasline project that never got built could have created a $9 billion liability to the subsidiary’s former partners to be borne by future shippers on the Lower 48 pipeline. While it was lobbying last year for the state concession to build the pipeline under the state’s Alaska Gasline Inducement Act process, TransCanada said the so-called “withdrawn partners liability” was a nonissue. Even if old legal business is not going to do in the company’s pipeline plans, current market circumstances still could. Weak gas prices and burgeoning Lower 48 gas production, as well as the potential for stepped-up imports of liquefied natural gas, all are causing some to question the economics of a Lower 48 gasline.

TransCanada Corp. last week settled some old business that could have been a stumbling block to development of a long-haul pipeline to carry Alaska North Slope natural gas to Lower 48 markets.

A combination of rising natural gas prices, the stumbling residential housing market and general economic weakness has led to above-average increases in past-due payments at many local distribution companies (LDC), particularly in the eastern United States, according to Moody’s Investors Service.

The Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) Tuesday approved a settlement proposal that removes a stumbling block from Georgia Power’s plans to build a 19-mile natural gas pipeline through the suburban metropolitan area just west of Atlanta.