TransCanada said Friday it hasn't determined whether there's enough demand for the Keystone XL pipeline, per a Politico report. Demand for the pipeline, which would connect oil sands in Alberta, Canada, with U.S. exporters and refiners, will be assessed this November.
What it means: That throws the pipeline's construction in question and is the strongest acknowledgement yet from TransCanada that this project, which is one of the first that Trump approved in his administration, might actually fail.
The problem with demand: It's coming from Asia. "If you're a producer in Alberta, the conundrum you face here is you really want to go west. Do you want to take barrels to the Gulf coast and fight with everyone else sending barrels through the Gulf Coast? ... no," said Rusty Braziel, president of RBN Energy.
The pipeline still needs Nebraska's approval, but TransCanada announced today it has opened it up to potential customers to bid for contracts to ship oil.
Due to their underperformance, Starbucks is shutting down all 379 Teavana stores in the U.S., which will impact 3,300 workers, the company announced on Thursday. Most locations will shut down by 2018.
"The company concluded that despite efforts to reverse the trend through creative merchandising and new store designs, the underperformance was likely to continue," Starbucks said in a press release.
Why it matters: Most of Teavana's stores are located in malls, which are already struggling to keep retailers and to keep their doors open as it becomes increasingly more difficult to compete with online shopping.
Major Apple supplier "Foxconn Technology Group ... pledged to invest $10 billion to build a display panel plant in [southeastern] Wisconsin that could employ up to 13,000 workers and draw up to $3 billion in subsidies from state taxpayers — a deal that could ripple through the economy and 2018 elections," per the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.
In an unusual statement, Toyota says it is nearing a breakthrough in a type of lithium-ion battery system that has vexed researchers for decades, and that it will unveil a family of electric cars with a jump in currently available range in the early 2020s.
Why it matters: Given the high stakes and risk of embarrassment if something goes wrong, Japanese companies virtually never flag a big tech breakthrough before it is actually produced and delivered to the market. Hence, Toyota's comparatively specific announcement suggests it is reasonably confident that it really has mastered a new battery technology, said Venkat Viswanathan, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University.
