North America: Arctic pipeline plans on the rocks

A 40-year plan to deliver natural gas from Arctic regions of the US and Canada to southern North American markets is under threat from large shale-gas discoveries elsewhere on the continent and slow-moving regulatory processes. Over the past decade, partnerships involving ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and ConocoPhillips have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on plans to develop Alaska's North Slope and Canada's Mackenzie Delta. Backers of the 4.5bn cubic feet a day (cf/d) $26bn Alaska project and the 1.8bn cf/d C$16.2bn ($13.7bn) Mackenzie Delta venture have tied their hopes to an unshakeable belief that gas prices will again rise well above $10/'000 cf as conventional reserves disappear. But th