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In 1994, two marketers frustrated with limited capacity to export natural gas from Western Canada drew up plans for the 3,000-kilometre Alliance pipeline on a paper napkin. More than two decades later, the resulting project faces a shaky future.

Alliance, now jointly owned by affiliates of Enbridge Inc. and Veresen Inc., carries gas rich in petroleum liquids such as butane, ethane and propane from northeastern British Columbia to the Chicago region. Its owners are currently negotiating with shippers to replace existing transportation contracts set to expire in December 2015.

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Without new commitments, industry analysts say the line is headed for a similar fate as TransCanada Corp.’s Canadian Mainline, which saw volumes plummet and transportation tolls spike as the U.S. shale boom undercut demand for Canadian gas in the New England, Ontario and Quebec markets.

“The Alliance system could be the next one to be repurposed out of Western Canada,” Ed Kallio, director of gas services at Ziff Energy Group, a division of HSB Solomon Associates LLC, said at an industry forum in Calgary this week.