Beacon brief: Monday, September 28, 2026

Columbia Gas Transmission, TC Energy's Appalachian system, declared force majeure on the Mountaineer XPress pipeline after crews detected a natural gas leak on Line 100 at the Saunders Creek Regulator Station in Cabell County, West Virginia, on the morning of September 24. The operator isolated the station with upstream operators and cut the affected segment to zero capacity from gas day September 25, hitting about 1.8 million dekatherms a day of firm service, and said the restriction would run at least through the September 26 to 28 weekend, per its notices relayed by The American Desk and Marcellus Drilling News. October NYMEX gas jumped 9.06 percent to $3.297 on Thursday, then gave back 10.1 cents on Friday on hopes of a weekend repair. No restoration had been confirmed in the sources Beacon read.¹

Enbridge's accident report to PHMSA, filed September 24, estimates the August 25 Line 5 release near Saxon, Wisconsin will cost at least $15.1 million, nearly $9.9 million of it emergency response, and puts the release at about 33,000 barrels of natural gas liquids, of which 165 were recovered, per WPR via Wisconsin Watch. A PHMSA corrective action order obtained by WPR states preliminary findings that the subcontractor's tractor trailer was left temporarily unattended in neutral on a slope before the failure. Enbridge told PHMSA it shut the line within three minutes and that its leak detection system did not trigger because of the immediate shutdown. PHMSA says its investigation is ongoing, with Stress Engineering Services performing mechanical and metallurgical analysis of the failed section.²

Libya's NOC said on the evening of September 26 that regular crude pumping through the main Sharara to Zawiya pipeline had resumed after Valve No. 7 was reopened, with precautionary measures taken for a safe restart, per Xinhua. Hours earlier NOC had shut one of the Zawiya refinery's units to keep the other running, and put the week's lost crude output above 942,000 barrels, peaking near 260,000 barrels on Tuesday, with losses of about $95 million, per The National. No force majeure was declared, and no settlement of the Petroleum Facilities Guard salary grievances behind the closure was reported in the sources Beacon read.³

Ukrainian drones struck the Ilsky oil refinery in Krasnodar Krai overnight on September 26, starting a fire; Ukraine's General Staff confirmed the strike, the regional governor reported fatalities, and Bloomberg put the toll at three dead. Drone maker Fire Point said three primary processing units and a tank farm were damaged and the plant suspended operations, per the Kyiv Independent. The refinery produces nearly 6.6 million tons of fuel a year and had been hit at least 16 times by June, per ASTRA. It is at least the fifth Russian refinery Beacon has logged as struck since the September 20 attack on Moscow.⁴

TotalEnergies (35 percent, operator), SOCAR (35 percent) and ADNOC's international investment arm XRG (30 percent) took FID on September 26 on the Absheron full field development in the Caspian, 100 km south-east of Baku, per TotalEnergies. The project raises field output from 1.5 to 6 bcm a year of gas and from 12,000 to 47,000 b/d of condensate from 2029, using four subsea wells, a subsea pipeline to shore and a new fully electrified onshore plant, on about 140 bcm of recoverable reserves. Gas will supply Azerbaijan's domestic market and be exported to Turkey through existing infrastructure connecting Azerbaijan to the European gas market. The partners did not disclose the investment value, per The National.⁵

The White House fact sheet on Xi Jinping's state visit lists $30 billion of reciprocal tariff relief in each direction, covering US agricultural goods, seafood, wood products, cosmetics and medical devices, plus Chinese purchases of at least 10 million metric tons of US coal in 2027 and again in 2028, per the White House and Axios. LNG is not on the list, and the fact sheet announces no change to China's 15 percent tariff on US LNG. The fact sheet also says Trump urged Xi to raise refined product output and that both leaders agreed no country may impose tolls on international waterways.⁶

EU Energy Commissioner Dan Jorgensen said on September 25 he has instructed Commission services to examine postponing the import part of the EU methane regulation by one year, to 2028, with energy ministers due to discuss it at an informal meeting in Dublin this week, per Bloomberg via Rigzone. From next year the rules require monitoring and reporting on fossil fuel imports, and from 2030 imports above a methane-intensity threshold could face penalties, with fines under the framework of up to 20 percent of annual turnover. A day earlier Repsol said about 90 percent of its crude supply would breach the rules because suppliers will not sign clauses committing them to provide the methane data it needs, per Bloomberg.⁷