The Oil Drum: Canada

LNG beats pipeline

Treating delta gas as an LNG opportunity is much more attractive than the Mackenzie pipeline option. Maybe the big giants behind the backers -- Exxon Mobil, Conoco Phillips, and Royal Dutch Shell -- fear upsetting their global petroleum, natural gas and LNG apple carts by allowing their Canadian subsidiaries to start playing for the first time outside their Canadian sand boxes. It may be an intolerable horror for these multi-nationals to see delta LNG "washing up" at global LNG terminals, and competing with their own non-Canadian LNG delivered to U.S. and overseas LNG-terminals. Or might marketing delta gas globally snatch away the currently dominant fuel, gas, from the ravenous appetites of oilsands gas-guzzlers, forcing them to consider fuel options other than gas, and risking further delays, because they are also primary holders of Alberta oilsands leases.

More Mexican labour needed in oil patch, executives say

Canada and Mexico should accelerate efforts to import temporary Mexican energy workers to alleviate the skills shortage in Alberta and other provinces as oil sands development ramps up, top North American CEOs will recommend today.

They will also call for Canada, the United States and Mexico to start work on harmonizing regulations and standards in three sectors: financial services, transportation, and food and agriculture, The Globe and Mail has learned.

The 30 chief executive officers make up the North American Competitiveness Council, formed last year to advise political leaders on strengthening economic ties between Canada, the United States and Mexico.

They're tabling a 63-page report with 51 recommendations today as top politicians from all three countries meet in Ottawa to advance a continental security and prosperity partnership first struck in 2005. They include U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, Mexican Secretary of Foreign Affairs Patricia Espinosa, Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay and Industry Minister Maxime Bernier.

Canada, U.S. on course for LNG collision

The Conservative government is refusing to allow huge liquefied natural-gas tankers to go through Canadian waters off New Brunswick to two proposed gas terminals in Maine because of worries of catastrophic accidents in the treacherously narrow passage.

Michael Wilson, the Canadian ambassador to the United States, said in a letter to U.S. energy regulators this week that Ottawa will refuse to allow the large tankers to go through the Canadian- controlled Head Harbour Passage to get to Maine ports....

....The latest cross-border battle will likely end up in an international court. While Canada claims it has exclusive jurisdiction over the Head Harbour Passage, the view of the U.S. government is that the waters are territorial and, under the United Nations' Law of the Sea Treaty, a country cannot deny foreign ships from passing through.