Headlines

VANCOUVER - A First Nation in British Columbia has served a company that wants to build a natural gas pipeline through its territory an eviction notice. Wet'suwet'en First Nation issued the notice Saturday night to Coastal GasLink for an area within their traditional territory near Huston, B.C. The letter, signed by a number of chiefs, says workers are "currently trespassing" on its unceded territory. Jen Wickham, a spokeswoman for one of the five clans that make up the First Nation, [Read more]

CALGARY - A veteran of Canada's ailing oilpatch is hoping a new product drawn from deep under Prairie grain fields will provide a natural resource boom for Western Canada. Marlon McDougall, 59, says he wasn't interested when first approached last year to join a junior exploration company. After 35 years in the oil and gas industry, he had grown frustrated by its multiplying headaches, including environmental criticism, pipeline constraints, regulatory burdens and the need to [Read more]

Canada’s fleet of active drilling rigs shrank from 99 to 85 since last week according to data from Baker Hughes. Total drilling count was 85 at January 3. 27 rigs were drilling for oil; 58 for natural gas. The drilling activity in Alberta remained at 64 from last week.  Saskatchewan’s drilling declined from 22 to 8 rigs. View a full breakdown of Western Canada’s rig activity. [Read more]

U.S. energy firms reduced the number of oil rigs operating for the second straight week as producers follow through on plans to slash spending on new drilling. Drillers cut 7 oil rigs in the week to Jan. 3, bringing the total count down to 670, energy services firm Baker Hughes Co said in its closely followed report on Friday. In the same week a year ago, there were 877 active rigs. Even though the number of rigs drilling new wells has fallen in 2019, U.S. oil output has continued to [Read more]

U.S. natural gas futures slightly extended gains on Friday following the release of a federal government report showing a storage draw in line with expectations. Traders noted that the market had risen in thin trade earlier in the day as traders covered shorts despite forecasts of even milder weather. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said utilities pulled 58 billion cubic feet (bcf) of gas from storage during the week ended Dec. 27. The report, normally released on [Read more]

U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures rose $1.76, or 2.9%, to $62.94 a barrel after a U.S. air strike killed key Iranian and Iraqi military personnel, raising concerns that escalating Middle East tensions may disrupt oil supplies. Brent crude futures jumped nearly $3 to hit a high of $69.16 a barrel, the highest since Sept. 17. The front-month Brent March contract was at $68.25 a barrel, up $2.00, or 3%, by 0258 GMT. "The supply side risks remain elevated in the Middle East [Read more]

VANCOUVER - The British Columbia Supreme Court has granted Coastal GasLink an interlocutory injunction against members of a First Nation and others who oppose the company's natural gas pipeline. The company is building a pipeline from northeastern B.C. to LNG Canada's export terminal in Kitimat on the coast. Coastal GasLink says it has signed agreements with all 20 elected First Nations councils along the 670-kilometres route but hereditary chiefs in the Wet'suwet'en First Nation say the [Read more]