TransCanada Mainline launched a new open season to target Western Canadian producers

On 13 October 2016 TransCanada Mainline launched a new open season between Empress and Dawn for as low as C$0.75/GJ[1] for 10 years, with term flexibility after five years, signalling that the pipeline is moving forward with the new toll structure after several iterations of the proposal over the past three months. TransCanada Mainline's long-haul utilization has been declining to less than 40% in 2016 from 46% in 2011, and will drop further as Eastern Canadian utilities convert their long-haul contracts to short-haul starting December 2016 to take advantage of proximate US Northeast supplies. The debottlenecking of Marcellus and Utica supplies and de-contracting on the TCPL mainline could put significant downward pressure on natural gas prices in Western Canada and stifle production growth.