The news about major happenings in the oil and gas sector just keeps on coming. Here are four of the latest and most interesting stories.

(1) Horn River Basin: The Horn River basin in British Columbia has become a “hot” play for natural gas exploration and development. Proven reserves so far are in excess of 10 trillion cubic feet, about the same size as the Mackenzie Delta field in the Northwest Territories. The four major players at Horn River are EnCana Corp. and Nexen Inc., both of Calgary, and EOG Resources Inc. and Apache Corp., both of Houston.

(2) Keystone Pipeline: U.S. regulatory authorities are close to approving the $5 billion Keystone oil pipeline, which is jointly owned by TransCanada Corp. of Calgary and ConocoPhillips Co. of Houston. Keystone will carry Tar Sands oil across Canada’s three Prairie Provinces (Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba), then south to refineries in Illinois and Oklahoma. The project will require about 2,000 kilometres of new pipeline in the U.S., plus conversions of existing natural gas pipelines to carry oil instead. Work is scheduled to start this year and to finish in stages in late 2009 and in 2010.

(3) Canaport LNG Project is confident of supply: The Canaport degasification project in Saint John, New Brunswick, will be acquiring its liquefied natural gas (LNG) mainly from Trinidad and Tobago. Canaport is a joint venture owned by Repsol (Spain) and Irving Oil Ltd. (New Brunswick). The construction phase of Canaport will be complete by December of this year. Securing supplies has become an issue since Gazprom of Russia backed out of a $3.5 billion gasification plant near St. Petersburg. That cancellation has thrown into doubt plans by Petro-Canada and TransCanada Corp. to build a $1 billion LNG facility at Gros Cacouna, Québec.

(4) The energy sector now heads the TSX/S&P: By market capitalization, energy stocks now make up 29% of the Toronto Stock Exchange’s composite index, up from 27% last year. This places energy ahead of the usual front-runner, the financial sector, which is down to 28% from 33%. The mining and materials sector has also increased its profile, climbing to 20% from 16% a year ago. Therefore, commodity-based stocks now make up about 50% of the Toronto Stock Exchange’s main index.

Media sources for the foregoing include The Globe & Mail, the National Post and Canadian Press.

Alex Carrick

Find Canadian construction-related economic articles in Canadian Construction Market News and in the Economic Outlook section of Daily Commercial News.

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