Canada considers Arctic Gateway to ship oil and gas from Alaska to Asia

 

 Mackenzie River Drainage Basin

Alaskan eyes ‘lit up’

Positive response to NWT minister’s suggestion of Canadian exports from Valdez

Gary Park   For Petroleum News  week of Dec. 14, 2014 

Arctic Gateway, a sweeping initiative to explore ways to move oil and natural gas from Alberta, the Northwest Territories, Yukon and Alaska to markets in the Asia-Pacific region, will likely be an underpinning of a standalone energy strategy being drafted in the NWT, said Industry Minister Dave Ramsay.   

.... The strategy could include recommendations for a pipeline down the Mackenzie Valley, breathing fresh life into the Arctic Gateway concept and giving the strongest push yet to the NWT government’s long-held dream of a transportation, energy and communications corridor along the river valley, including a fiber optic link and a possible all-weather highway, Ramsay said....

... One of the key unresolved issues is whether the Arctic Gateway would establish an exit point for Canadian oil and gas at Tuktoyaktuk, north of Inuvik on the shores of the Arctic Ocean, or at Valdez..... 

.... But he emphasized that there is no chance of any project moving ahead without an ownership role for NWT aboriginal governments, extending the precedent already set for a one-third equity stake for the Aboriginal Pipeline Group in the Mackenzie Gas Project....  read more here

 

California communities fight back against crude by rail

Grist     by Tara Lohan    13 Dec 2014 

This story is a part of Faces of Fracking: Stories From the Front Lines of Fracking in California. Click here for the full series.

..... Crude by rail has increased 4,000 percent across the country since 2008 and California is feeling the effects. By 2016 the amount of crude by rail entering the state is expected to increase by a factor of 25. That’s assuming industry gets its way in creating more crude by rail stations at refineries and oil terminals. And that’s no longer looking like a sure thing.....

.... With all this crude by rail activity, some big picture thinking would be helpful. As Attorney General Kamala Harris wrote about the Benicia project, “There’s no consideration of cumulative impacts that could affect public safety and the environment by the proliferation of crude-by-rail projects proposed in California.”....    read article here

35 CN train cars derail near Raymore, Sask.

No leaks or risk to public safety at this time, RCMP say

CBC News     Dec 12, 2014 

Canadian National Railway now says that 35 cars, not 33, with one carrying dangerous goods, went off the tracks near Raymore, Sask.

The derailment happened at 9:45 a.m. CST Friday, just west of the town about 110 kilometres north of Regina.....   read more here