Alaska pipeline rivals not in direct talks, outgoing TransCanada CEO says - Brandon Sun
Not so fast, I guess. According to Hal Kvisle (who retired as TCPL's CEO this week), there have been no "direct talks" about a merger of his Alaska Highway Pipeline project and that of Denali proponents BP and ConocoPhilips.
Kvisle said that any contact has strictly been related to possible shipping volumes on their line. Since TCPL (or "TCAlaska", if you will) is conducting its Open Season to obtain shipping commitments right now, this is entirely appropriate, and--at least in theory--should have no bearing on how the projects might work together in the future.
In practice? Well, that may be another story. For one thing, if sensitive talks were in progress, I'm thinking Kvisle would deny it regardless. And for another, if BP and their partner are developing cold feet, then they might be making a larger shipping commitment.
This whole thing might look a little odd to those outside the industry. Here we have shippers aligned with competing projects (ExxonMobil is working with TCAlaska, and BP and ConocoPhilips are pushing the Denali project); it would seem that these competitors would go out of their way to discredit the competing project by "under-committing" to the competitor. The truth is, though, that this has been the way they've done business in the oil and gas industry for decades. The other thing to remember is that if BP committed to ship a considerably larger volume of gas on its own line than it would on TC's, it would definitely raise some eyebrows.
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