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This week the United States witnessed a sea change in the policy of the US government toward pipeline construction.

Indeed, President Trump's program to rebuild America's infrastructure suffered a big blow when a federal court ruled that regulators must examine the pipeline's impact on global climate change before granting approval.

Sound Energy, a European and African focused upstream gas company, obtained a non-bonding funding proposal of up to US$100 million for its eastern Morocco gas project. The proposal has been made by the Advisory & Finance Group Investment Bank (AFG) on behalf of a range of institutions, including shareholders of OGIF (Oil & Gas Investment Fund).

The preparations for the construction of the European gas pipeline link EUGAL are making progress. From Friday, 1 September 2017, the first pipes will be delivered to several pipe storage points until construction of EUGAL starts in mid-2018. The storage points are located along the planned route, which will require a total of 47,000 pipes to be completed. The pipes will be transported by train to eastern Germany and then distributed by truck from railway stations in Lubmin, Drögeheide and Prenzlau to nearby storage points.

Saipem, one of the leading companies in the engineering, procurement, construction and commissioning of pipelines worldwide, has won a $850 million contract to complete the feed pipelines of the New Refinery Project in Al-Zour south of Kuwait.

The contract has been awarded by the Kuwait Oil Co. (KOC), a subsidiary of the Gulf country’s national oil company, the Kuwait Petroleum Corp. (KPC).

The northern Persian Gulf has been hit with a series of major oil spills, affecting Kuwait and Saudi Arabia with an estimated 35,000 barrels of crude in the first incident and an undetermined amount in the second, which followed two days later.. Already the beaches of Ras Al Zour, where Kuwait is building a massive US$30 billion (Dh110.2bn) oil complex that includes a 615,000-barrel-per-day refinery, are being tarred, and residents are being asked to stay away for the contaminated shoreline and waters.

Seasonal rains, security threats and overall contractor incompetence has delayed the completion of the 123-km, 48 inch East-West Gas Pipeline in Nigeria. 31 July 2017 had been the start-up goal of the project.

The pipeline will bring natural gas from the resource - rich eastern Niger Delta to the western Niger Delta, where energy demand is high due to a plethora of new industrial customers and power plants.

In light of a deficient pipeline transportation infrastructure and of power plants that struggle to come online, not a single bid to participate in the current round has been received by CENAGAS in Mexico. The state has thus called the auction null and void.

The round offered 2.1 billion cubic feet (bcf), or 60 million cubic metres/day, of pipeline capacity belonging to CFE International - the US-based fuels trading arm of Mexico’s state power utility CFE - in five different pipelines linking gas hubs in the southern US to the border.

Shell Oil company is complying with California State Regulator's recommendation to replace 19 km of the 285 km long San Pablo Bay pipeline after two spills contaminated grasslands close to San Francisco with 60,000 gallons of heavy crude oil.

Investigators found both were caused by “fatigue cracks” that grew as pressure on the underground line fluctuated to deal with different grades of oil, according to documents obtained by KQED, a local television news network.

US produced shale gas reached British homes and power plants for the first time ever. Last week, the UK took a delivery from America with liquefied natural gas as the LNG Carrier GALEA arrived at the Isle of Grain port in Kent, 60 kilometer east of London. The Isle of Grain-Terminal has got a capacity of one million cubic meters of LNG, making it Europe's largest installation of that kind.

Cenex Pipeline Company, a subsidiary of the global agribusiness CHS company, has submitted a proposal to the state Public Service Commission in North Dakota to build a major pipeline across the state and into Montana. The 290 km, 10 inch pipeline would transport refined petroleum products - gasoline and diesel - across three rivers in North Dakota and one major one, the Missouri, in Montana.

This week the House of Representatives followed the Senate in voting overwhelmingly to impose broad sanctions on Russia for behavior deemed unacceptable to the United States, particularly the alleged cyber hacking of the US election. The bill targets, among other things, any company that contributes to the renovation or construction of Russia's export pipelines, and Nord Stream 2 is specifically judged to have detrimental impacts on the European Union's energy security and energy reforms in the Ukraine.

The Trans Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline's (TANAP) is 77 percent finished and is set for final completion in 2018, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said at the beginning of the week.

During the 22nd World Petroleum Congress in Istanbul, Aliyev stated that projects such as the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, Baku-Tblisi-Erzurum natural gas pipeline and TANAP contribute to not only regional but also the global energy map.