... emblematic of the changes to Canada's pipeline industry -- changes that have come on so abruptly they have introduced urgency and vitriol to a business that for decades was unsafe, secure, boring even.

Mr. (Dennis) Cornelson, a former vice-president of marketing with Alberta Energy Co., represented the interests of the entrepreneurial, risk-taking natural-gas producers who founded Alliance (pipeline project).

Mr. (George) Watson, a former banker with Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, exemplified the old-school monopolistic mentality of the pipeline industry, which for years preached to gas producers what was in their best interests.

"It's all happened really quick.
It's kind of like the electronic commerce business and the Internet how fast things have changed," says Gwyn Morgan, CEO of Alberta Energy. "Once you let the pigeons fly, it's amazing what happens. The whole world changes."

Natural gas, once the ugly sister of the oilpatch, has become a high-stakes production game.

It all started back in 1985 and 1986, when federal and provincial governments gutted the National Energy Program and deregulated the gas industry.

That meant the end of easy life for the TCPL, which had held a near-monopoly on coast-to-coast transportation, and Nova Corp., which owned the main transmission line in Alberta.

At the same time, the production of pipeline content -- that is, gas -- was surging, and exports to the United States were growing.

All these factors gradually opened the way for the $4.5-billion Alliance Project.
In November, 2000, 15 years after deregulation began, Alliance is to begin shooting gas from northeastern British Columbia to the Chicago area. From there, it can be sent to Ontario and the northern States on other firm's pipelines.

Where once it faced a problem of too much gas and not enough pipe, the industry now faces the prospect of too much export capacity, a situation that has helped to boost the price of natural gas to record levels and forced the pipeline companies to become competitive.

... "Like all kinds of wars there's a point at which you can have compromise and there's a point at which it goes beyond that and it becomes a fight to the finish," says Mr. Morgan, whose Alberta Energy is one of a handful of gas producers instrumental in the creation of Alliance. "At the point where the Alliance project got the necessary ownership and the necessary financing and all the approvals it needed from regulators, the other pipelines were no longer in a position to bargain because they'd used up their opportunity. That's the way it is. You pay a price for that."

... Mr. Morgan recalls the late 1960s and 1970s when U.S. pipeline companies, and to some extent Canadian ones, held a mandate to fill their pipelines at any cost even if it meant exploring and buying gas. At the time, Western Canada was awash with the cheap fuel.

"It was a pretty tough scene for producers back then," he recalls.
"There was this tremendous regulated mandate and cost didn't seem to be an issue. That was the kind of mentality of the whole pipeline sector in those days. There was always tremendous tension between the pipeliners and the producers over many, many years. Now we've moved into a place where the pipelines have to be cost-competitive against each other and against the total market and it's a huge change and cultural change that many companies are having great difficulty getting their heads around."

Bruce Simpson, who spent 28 years with TCPL, Nova and its predecessors, most recently as chief financial officer before retiring last summer, says many in his company could not understand why TCPL's customers would choose to support Alliance even though it had higher costs than the existing system.