Canadian Shale Horn River Play Attracts Further Japanese Interest in Penn West JV

CALGARY — Federal approval of an export licence for Shell Canada Ltd.’s proposed liquefied natural gas plant only weeks after oil major Chevron Corp. took control of another major facility planned for the B.C. coast sets the stage for a revival in Western Canadian drilling activity that has withered amid languishing gas prices.

CALGARY — Pipeline firm AltaGas Ltd.  and a Japanese company have formed a partnership to explore shipping liquefied gas across the Pacific to Asian markets clamouring for new energy supplies. The Calgary-based company and Idemitsu Kosan Co. Ltd., a major petrochemical and refining firm, will each own half of the partnership, which envisions transporting both liquefied petroleum gas and liquefied natural gas overseas.

Woodside Petroleum Ltd., Australia’s second-biggest oil producer, said it’s in talks with companies for a potential partnership to enter Canada’s natural gas industry to tap rising Asian demand. “It’s natural in an area that has the sort of hydrocarbon resource that Canada does that Woodside is in there talking to people,” Chief Executive Officer Peter Coleman said Thursday in an interview in Sydney, declining to name any companies.

Canadian projects will be under more pressure than most to link to Henry Hub, given the current linkage with the U.S. market Alarmed by the 13.4% jump in its natural gas import bill last year, Japan is planning a new energy strategy that could change how natural gas is traded around the world and put pressure on some of the proposed Canadian liquefied natural gas projects.

TOKYO — Japan Petroleum Exploration (Japex) is taking a 10% stake in an integrated shale gas development and liquefied natural gas (LNG) project being planned by Malaysia’s Petronas in Canada’s British Columbia province. Japex said on Monday it is considering marketing its LNG offtake from the 12 million tonnes per year (mtpy) Pacific Northwest LNG project, worth 1.2 mtpy, in Japan, the world’s largest importer of LNG, which has been increasingly reliant on LNG since the Fukushima disaster in 2011 knocked out much of its nuclear power capacity.

By 2020, the B.C. government anticipates three LNG export facilities could pump more than $20-billion into the provincial economy, generate 9,000 new construction jobs and more than $1-billion a year of additional revenue It is, by any reckoning, a methane superhighway in the making.

CALGARY — Alberta’s landlocked bitumen reserves stand to lose their allure as China’s state-backed oil giants pour money into the light oil renaissance underway in pockets of the United States.

Decisions by Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. and Talisman Energy Inc. to sell almost half a million acres of natural gas-soaked rock threaten to depress prices for land that drew a record premium last year.