The Lead

A portion of a TransCanada natural gas pipeline exploded early Thursday in Moundsville, West Virginia.

Fortunately, no employees were at the site along the Columbia Gas Transmission pipeline when the blast went off, and no homes were directly impacted by the fires. The incident could potentially impact 1.3 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day, enough to influence over five million U.S. homes. TransCanada didn’t know when the pipeline would return to service but declared force majeure — a common clause in a contract that frees parties from their obligations when an unforeseen incident prevents a party from fulfilling its contractual requirements. Several entities are investigating the explosion including TransCanada, the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, and the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, Reuters reports.

In Canada

A federal-provincial review panel has declared an application for the Frontier Oil Sands Mine project “complete enough” to commence public hearings on the plans beginning as early as September. The panel is accepting submissions for preferred locations and dates for the hearing. Requests to submit evidence or participate in the hearing must be made before June 22. The open pit project is being spearheaded by Vancouver-based Teck Resources, is expected to cost $20 billion, and is designed to produce 260,000 barrels of bitumen per day from a site 110 kilometres away from Fort McMurray, the Canadian Press reports.

A company based in British Columbia called Carbon Engineering has figured out a way to suck carbon dioxide out of the air and turn it into fuel for cars and trucks at a third of the cost that other leading companies do it for. The process is called direct air capture in which carbon dioxide is removed from the air via a chemical process, then combined with hydrogen and oxygen to create fuels. While it costs other pioneering companies about US$600 per tonne to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, Carbon Engineering claims that it can do the job for anywhere between US$94 and US$232 per tonne. The difference in costs stems largely from the fact that Carbon Engineering uses readily available technology and components. “We’re tapping into existing industrial equipment and then defining a new process and applying some unique chemistry to it,” said Steve Oldham of Carbon Engineering.

Internationally

Following President Donald Trump’s decision to tack imported solar panels with a 30 per cent tariff, renewable energy companies have cancelled or hit pause on $2.5 billion in investments for large solar projects in the United States. Cypress Creek Renewables cancelled $1.5 billion in projects as the tariffs drastically increased costs for the company, while Southern Current put $1 billion in projects on hold. Neither company has provided specific details on the projects in question. It’s worth noting that, as of January, renewable firms only intended to spend $1 billion total on large solar panel projects, Reuters reports.

On Friday morning, Brent Crude was at US$76.83 and West Texas Intermediate was at US$65.86.

Noteworthy

In Opinion

To prevent a future Trans Mountain debacle, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the federal government must “demonstrate their preparedness to resolutely thwart any civil disobedience intended solely to obstruct approved infrastructure, to remove legislatively any ambiguities on the primacy of federal jurisdiction and to clarify legislatively what constitutes adequate consultation with impacted stakeholders,” suggests Dennis McConaghy. He maintains that the government also needs to update its environmental review process to make it more technocratic and it needs to clarify its carbon pricing strategy. Read McConaghy’s complete argument in his piece for the Financial Post.