Pipelines

Militants staged coordinated attacks on three pipelines, inflicting the worst damage on Nigeria's vital oil infrastructure in more than a year. Hours later, gunmen stormed a vessel carrying workers in the southern Niger Delta and abducted four foreigners, two private industry officials said. Security sources later said they were Americans, but there were no immediate details. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta claimed responsibility for the bombings.

TransCanada has revealed the route it would like to use to build the Keystone XL oil pipeline through Nebraska, where the $7-billion project has become mired in concerns over the nation's most important agricultural aquifer. A new report submitted by the Canadian pipeline company to the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality shows an alternative route for the pipeline, designed to carry diluted bitumen from the tar sands of Alberta province to U.S. refineries.

A powerful pipeline explosion that killed two people and injured 31 others in San Bernardino could have been avoided if a routine pressure test had been conducted, a pipeline safety official has told a congressional committee. Richard L. Beam, director of the federal Office of Pipeline Safety, told the subcommittee on investigations and oversight for the House Public Works and Transportation Committee that a pressure test would have revealed the danger. A spokesman for Calnev Pipe Line Co.

WASHINGTON - The Republican-controlled House on Wednesday passed a transportation bill that would advance the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, defying a White House veto threat and stoking an election-year fight over what Congress can do about gas prices. The 293-127 vote to extend highway and transit funding through September sets up contentious negotiations with the Democratic-led Senate. The Senate rejected an effort to include the Canada-to-Texas pipeline project in its two-year $109-billion transportation bill.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has announced two pipeline rehabilitation projects to improve water quality for Valley residents in North Hollywood, Woodland Hills and Tarzana. On Aug. 31, the department will begin a cement mortar lining project on Vanowen Street from Coldwater Canyon Boulevard to Morella Avenue in North Hollywood, said Michael Grahek, contract administrator for the DWP's pipeline rehabilitation section.

Three former Soviet republics have signed a contract with the Bechtel construction company and two other firms to build an oil pipeline stretching 500 miles across the Caucasus. A Bechtel spokesman said the $850-million pipeline will link the city of Grozny, near the Caspian Sea, to Novorossiysk on the Black Sea. The pipeline will be owned by the former Soviet republics of Russia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan as well as the Sultanate of Oman.

The governments of Turkey and Iran plan more talks soon on natural gas and oil pipeline projects, State Minister Gunes Taner said Friday. "We have reached (tentative) agreement on a natural gas and an oil pipeline from Iran to third countries through Turkey," Taner told the semi-official Anatolian News Agency.

Kinder Morgan Energy Partners, the second-largest publicly traded pipeline partnership, won federal approval Thursday for a rate plan it sought to fund a $400-million expansion of its California-to-Las Vegas fuel pipeline. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, meeting in Washington, approved Kinder Morgan's rate-plan request for the 550-mile Calnev pipeline, which ships gasoline, diesel and jet fuel from Colton.

Traffic lanes and bike paths along Jeffrey Road will be closed periodically beginning Monday, when the Irvine Ranch Water District starts construction of a reclaimed-water pipeline. Traffic delays are anticipated on Jeffrey Road between Irvine Center Drive and the San Diego Freeway because only one lane will be open to motorists, officials said. Signs have already been posted along the road to inform drivers and cyclists about the upcoming lane closures.

San Diego-based Sempra Energy and Houston-based Kinder Morgan Energy Partners plan a $3-billion natural gas pipeline linking the Rocky Mountains, a region forecast to become the largest U.S. source of fuel output, to the Midwest and East. The pipeline would carry as much as 2 billion cubic feet of gas a day from Wyoming to Ohio beginning in 2008, the companies said Wednesday. Kinder Morgan would own two-thirds of the project; Sempra, parent of Southern California Gas Co., would have a 33% stake.

The on-again, off-again Keystone XL pipeline gained new traction in Nebraska on Wednesday. State legislators authorized the state Department of Environmental Quality to begin evaluating options for a new route outside the sensitive Nebraska Sandhills , the marshy hills and grasslands that lie atop the nation's most important agricultural aquifer. Critics of the pipeline, which would carry tar sands oil from Canada to the Texas Gulf Coast, say the legislation amounts to a rubber stamp for TransCanada.

After being pummeled for months by both left and right over the Keystone XL pipeline, the Obama administration is trying to start over — this time with a new name. In January, the administration turned down an application to build the pipeline from Canada's tar sands region to the Gulf Coast. TransCanada, the company that wants to build the pipeline, more recently announced plans to go ahead with the southern portion of the route, starting from Cushing, Okla., which White House officials maintain is more urgently needed.

President Obama traveled to one of the nation's oil transportation hubs, offering what administration officials hope voters will see as a centrist alternative to the polarized debate over the Keystone XL pipeline — and quickly drew fire from activists on both sides. Earlier this year, Obama deferred the building of a pipeline from Canada's tar sands to the Gulf Coast through environmentally sensitive parts of the Midwest. On Thursday, he said his administration would expedite construction of the southern part of the route, starting in Cushing, Okla.

President Obama said Thursday morning that his administration has assured the builder of the Keystone pipeline that the federal government will promptly review the southern leg of the project, which the company hopes to start building this summer. “The southern leg of it, we're making a priority,” Obama told a crowd of company officials, pipe workers and community members gathered here at the starting point of this stretch of the project. The northern portion of the project, Obama said, “we're going to have to review to make sure that the health and safety of the American people are protected.” The Obama administration has denied a permit for that northern pipeline, opposed by environmentalists because the original plans would have run it through environmentally sensitive lands.

After being pummeled for months by both left and right over the Keystone XL pipeline, the Obama administration is trying to start over -- this time with a new name. In January, the administration turned down an application to build the pipeline from Canada's tar sands region to the Gulf Coast. TransCanada, the company that wants to build the pipeline, more recently announced plans to go ahead with the southern portion of the route, starting from Cushing, Okla., which White House officials maintain is the more urgently needed part.

No place like home Re " A prodigy works to aid others in Mexico," March 8 Kudos to Andrew Almazan. He is quoted as saying: "There are many opportunities here in Mexico, in work and in education; we just have to go out and find them. " Almazan just told the world that things aren't as dire in Mexico as many illegal immigrants who are now college-educated in the U.S. would have us believe. You read about the graduates who mow lawns as landscapers because they can't legally get a job in the U.S. doing what they went to college for. Enter Almazan, 17, a director of child psychology, saying that there is plenty of opportunity in Mexico.

An explosion hit a gas pipeline that crosses from Russia to supply Europe, destroying a 100-foot section but causing no injuries, Ukrainian officials said. The blast hit the line south of Kiev, Ukraine's capital, said an Emergency Situations Ministry spokesman. The state-owned transit company, Ukrtransgaz, said European consumers would not be affected because gas would be pumped through other pipelines or taken from storage.

The California Public Utilities Commission said Wednesday that it will allow competition to determine which proposed pipelines will bring clean-burning natural gas to California from out of state, rather than making the choice itself. California's demand for natural gas is rising rapidly and the state needs new pipelines, said PUC Commissioner Stanley W. Hulett.

  China'slargest bank has backed out of a deal to finance a proposed Iran-to-Pakistan gas pipeline that is opposed by the United States, a potential sign of the lengthening reach of U.S. economic sanctions on Iran. Pakistani officials confirmed Wednesday that Industrial and Commercial Bank of China had withdrawn from plans to head a consortium that would finance the $1.6-billion Pakistani portion of the cross-border pipeline, apparently over concern that the bank could be excluded from the U.S. economy.

Pacific Gas & Electric Co. announced Monday that it will pay $70 million in restitution to the Bay Area city of San Bruno for a pipeline explosion that killed eight people and destroyed a neighborhood two years ago. "This money will be used for the benefit of all the citizens of our city and to help us, as a community, get beyond the tragedy and devastation caused by PG&E's explosion and fire," Mayor Jim Ruane said. The utility plans to provide the money to San Bruno within 30 days.