-Enbridge will invest $200 million to expand its Sunday Creek Terminal in northern Alberta. The company said it would add a new facility adjacent to its existing terminal, which has been in service since August 2011. The facility processes oil sands crude from the Christina Lake area.
-Shell has commissioned the construction of a $10 billion, 1,600-foot boat that will tap and chill natural gas in small, remote fields. The company hopes the Prelude vessel, which is being built in South Korea, will help it tap gas fields located 100 miles off the coast of Australia. Exxon Mobil is reportedly interested in building a similar vessel.
-Via Bloomberg, Kinder Morgan is in talks to ship crude oil via tankers from Texas to California on the Panama Canal. California has been importing most of its oil from Saudi Arabia in recent years, but a glut of cheaper crude produced on the Gulf Coast could change that. The availability of Jones Act tankers has been an obstacle in delivering oil to the West Coast, but Kinder Morgan is working to finalize a deal that will ultimately give it nine such vessels.
-The Dow Chemical Co. indicated during a conference call it is not ready to bow to pressure from investors to spin off its petrochemicals unit. Dow CEO Andrew Liveris told analysts the company’s petrochemical division makes it a “complete value chain.” Liveris’ remarks came more than a week after investor Daniel Loeb urged Dow to separate its petrochemicals unit as part of the company’s strategic shift toward specialty chemicals.
-Hess Corp. agreed to sell 74,000 acres of its Utica Shale dry gas acreage to an undisclosed party for $924 million. CEO John Hess said in a statement the company could not justify holding on to the dry gas acreage that, while productive, no longer fits Hess’ liquids-based strategy.
