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In a precautionary move designed to give Saudi Arabia more oil export options in the unlikely event that Iran closes down the Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, the government of Prince Salman in Saudi Arabia intends to build an alternative pipeline from its borders through the Yemeni district of Al Mahrah to the Arabian Sea.

Already Saudi forces have been deployed along the coastal strip of Al Mahrah as the country prepares to extend the oil pipeline from Al Kharkir to the Port of Nishtun in Al Mahrah.

Construction of the section of the European Gas Pipeline Link (EUGAL) in Saxony, Germany, can begin in September. The planning approval decision was handed over to the company in charge of the project, GASCADE Gastransport GmbH, by the Dresden office of the state authorities in Saxony today, Thursday, 6 September 2018. It contains all the partial approvals required to build the northern section of EUGAL in Saxony. The section runs southward from the municipality of Schönfeld in the Meißen district to Wilsdruff in the Sächsische Schweiz-Osterzgebirge district.

Gascade, a subsidiary of BASF and Gazprom, has awarded the construction of 6 lots of the EUGAL Gas Pipeline to the Joint Venture between Bonatti and Max Streicher. The Pipeline will be powered by the Nord Stream 2, the gas transport network that connects Siberia to the heart of Europe via the Baltic Sea. The overall route of EUGAL is around 480 km long (Line 1 / 480 km; Line 2 / 329 km)

Confidence in the case for gas is growing, according to a survey by DNV GL, the technical advisor to the industry. The vast majority (86%) of the 813 senior industry professionals surveyed agree that gas - the least carbon-intensive fossil fuel - will play an increasingly important role in the global energy mix over the next decade, up from 77% last year.

Liderroll has achieved a major victory in the United States: US authorities have granted the definitive patent in the country for a special invention that will change the parameters of tunnel construction. This patent will give exclusivity to Liderroll to manufacture and install concave supports in tunnels made by tunnel boring machines (TBM). From now on, no other company is allowed to install concave supports that follow the geometry of the circular section of tunnels built with TBM. It was a victory of the company, after a lot of back-and-forth.

After decades of political and legal wrangling the five littoral states to the Caspian Sea have agreed to the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea, clarifying maritime borders and granting each state sovereign rights to the sea.

The states, Russia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan can construct offshore pipelines if they have the consent of the neighboring country (before consent of all littoral states was required).

Baker Hughes, a GE company, has broken ground on a new European Customer Solutions Center (CSC) for its Inspection Technologies (IT) business, one of the world's leading providers of non-destructive testing (NDT). The CSC will be housed on IT’s existing Wunstorf, Germany site and will be the flagship CSC for European customers and partners. BHGE will invest a significant amount in the millions of dollars in the new 9.250 sqm CSC and plans to add up to 100 jobs to the Wunstorf site as part of the project.

A bomb attack on the 780-km, 210,000 bpd Cano Limon Covenas oil pipeline in Columbia has forced Ecopetrol SA, the state - run oil company, to suspend operations.

The pipeline has been a target some 60 times this year by the National Liberation Army (ELN), the country’s sole remaining active guerrilla group, and ELN is suspected of this most recent sabotage as well.

US-President Donald Trump announced Friday to double tariffs on steel imported from Turkey to 50%. This could put additional pressure on Kinder Morgan’s proposed Gulf Coast Express Pipeline and dampen prospects for future US natural gas projects. Houston-based Kinder Morgan Inc., which moves more than a third of the gas consumed in the US, is sourcing 144,000 mt of steel pipe from Turkey, which is nearly half of the required steel. It is planned to be used for Gulf Coast Express. An American company is set to produce 175,000 mt for the mentioned pipeline.

Canadian energy infrastructure operator TransCanada Corporation has awarded a contract to a joint venture made up of Spiecapag Canada Corp, a VINCI subsidiary and operational leader, and Macro Pipelines Inc. to build two sections of gas pipeline in the province of Vancouver, British Columbia.

The C$900 million (about €585 million) contract includes the construction of more than 166 kilometres of gas pipeline as part of the 670 km Coastal GasLink Pipeline. The contract amount is split, with 60% going to Spiecapag and 40% to Macro Pipelines Inc.

The joint, nationwide market area to be established in Germany will presumably start operations on 1 October 2021. This is the date the German gas transmission system operators (TSOs) have agreed with the Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur), the national regulatory authority. The TSOs believe that the planned timing, which coincides with the start of the gas year, is the most convenient solution for market participants from an operational perspective.

The Trump administration, seeking to justify its fascination with coal, a product that is increasingly out of favor with most other industrialized countries worldwide, is arguing that gas pipelines are too vulnerable to hacking, threatening American energy security. Therefore, the United States, it is argued, need more coal in the energy mix. Why a hacker intending to disrupt energy security in the United States could not also hack into a coal-fired plant was not addressed by Energy Secretary Rick Perry.