It sure looks like all Cowboys and Indians as far as fossil fuel companies are concerned, and the only Cowboys are the fossil fuel executives and investors. First Nations just won a temporary victory in New Brunswick, Canada against fracking company SWN, a wholly owned subsidiary of Southwestern Energy of Houston, Texas. Landowners and other pipeline opponents in the U.S. southeast maybe can stop a methane pipeline that could well connect all the way up to those same contested shale fields in New Brunswick.

APTN national news wrote yesterday, SWN ending exploration work in NB, will be back in 2015: Elsipogtog War Chief Levi,

ELSIPGOTG FIRST NATION, NB—A Houston-based energy company that has faced ferocious resistance from a Mi’kmaq-led coalition is ending its shale gas exploration work for the year, says Elsipogtog War Chief John Levi.

Levi said Friday that the RCMP informed him that SWN Resources Canada is ending its exploration work, but will return in 2015.

SWN is not Spectra Energy. SWN fracks for gas; Spectra mostly transports it in pipelines. But look at Spectra’s own map, Our Portfolio of Assets:

Spectra’s Texas Eastern pipeline connects way up northeast to other pipelines that connect to New Brunswick, right up to SWN’s New Brunswick area.

Does Spectra actually carry gas from SWN’s New Brunswick fracking fields? Well, not yet, because there are some First Nations standing in the way of fracking there. Will they connect later? We don’t know, but it seems like an obvious way to get fracked methane from there to anywhere else.

And where does Spectra’s Sabal Trail pipeline start? With leased capacity through Transco in Alabama to connect to Spectra’s other pipelines:

So that looks like a potential path from SWN’s New Brunswick shale fields through our farmlands in Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. With the fat cats in Houston and Juno Beach, Florida treating First Nations in Canada and landowners in the U.S. southeast pretty much the same way.

-jsq

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