Watershed at a Glance. The Cannon River watershed is located south of the Twin Cities and encompasses areas of Dakota, Goodhue, Le Sueur, Steele, Rice and Waseca counties. The watershed drains approximately 1,460 square miles through two main channels, the Cannon and Straight Rivers, to the Mississippi at Red Wing.
While some large industrial, commercial, and electric generation customers receive natural gas directly from high capacity interstate and intrastate pipelines (usually contracted through natural gas marketing companies), most other users receive natural gas from their local gas utility, also called a local distribution company (LDC).
Indeed, in China, Europe and the U.S., natural gas provides more competition for renewable energy than oil, noted Xizhou Zhou, senior director at IHS Energy. In these regions, natural gas is generally traded independently of oil, with its link to crude prices weakening, he noted. In the short term, utilities might want gas more than renewables, he said, but he doesn't expect the lower fossil fuel prices to affect renewable demand much in the short-to-medium-term.