OPAL Pipeline To Connect To Baltic Sea

Canada needs to “get its house in order” regarding carbon emissions, according to Liberal Party leader Justin Trudeau. If Canada shows it’s serious about dealing with climate change by putting a price on carbon at the national level – Alberta has a carbon tax structure – then it would be easier for the Obama administration to approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline project. However, this runs counter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s position, which holds Canada faces competitive disadvantages if it implements a carbon pricing regime without also having similar policy in the US. [Bloomberg]

The US is often called the Saudi Arabia of coal, but much of those reserves are buried too deeply to be accessed via existing mining technology. One solution is underground coal gasification, which is a technology that would burn the fuel as much as a mile below ground and capture released gases that can be used to make diesel and feed power generation equipment. But environmental risks and sufficient coal reserves closer to the surface appear to make widespread deployment of the technology a longer-term prospect. [NPR]

Eastern European nations applauded a bill passed by the House on Wednesday that would expedite the US LNG export plant approval process. However, regardless of legislation designed to speed the process, decisions to make multi-billion dollar liquefaction plant investments come down to complex negotiations between corporate entities followed by lengthy permitting and construction phases, which all mean Eastern Europe is unlikely to receive significant volumes of US LNG in the short term. [Financial Times]