"A dispute between Canadian pipeline giant Enbridge Inc. and a small Colorado operator is flaring into a political showdown over whether U.S. domestic production will be squeezed out by oil sands crude flowing from across the northern border."

"High Prairie Pipelines LLC is accusing Enbridge of denying its request to directly link a proposed 450-mile pipeline from the booming Bakken Shale play in North Dakota and Montana to a highway of pipelines currently carrying Canadian oil sands crude into the United States.

Enbridge says its 1,900-mile system won't have the capacity to accommodate the U.S. crude by the time the proposed pipeline is built. But producers and refiners throughout the Midwest are accusing the Canadian company of reserving space for an expected surge of oil sands crude that would have been shipped through the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which the Obama administration delayed."

Hannah Northey reports for Greenwire July 12, 2012. [2]