The Financial Post reports in its Wednesday edition that natural gas producers have been forced to shut in their production after Alliance Pipeline LP declared a force majeur Tuesday on its export pipeline to Chicago. The Post's Geoffrey Morgan writes that Alliance Pipeline, a joint venture between Enbridge and Veresen, announced that heavy rain in northwestern Alberta hit sections of its mainline, and that it plans to reduce service on its line as it investigates the problem. The line's outage is affecting 500 million cubic feet of natural gas production and that will hit gas prices at the Station 2 pricing hub in British Columbia and the AECO pricing hub in Alberta. Given large volumes of gas production and limited pipeline capacity, producers face price discounts at both Station 2 and AECO relative to the price of gas at important hubs in Ontario, Chicago and Louisiana. "We're short on capacity in that area already," said Solomon Associates' Cameron Gingrich, adding that a handful of producers may be able to send their gas on TransCanada's system in the area but others would need to shut in gas production as most gas pipelines are full. Crew Energy plans to shut in all of its production at Montney.