Canadian infrastructure and North American crude exports
An analyst at GlobalData has said that wile the US ‘procrastinates’, Canada is taking concrete action to ensure its ability to increase crude exports into both the Atlantic and Pacific basins with the development of new pipelines.
Carmine Rositano, GlobalData’s Managing Analyst covering downstream oil and gas, has said that Canada is developing infrastructure projects, including the proposed East Energy Access Pipeline Projects, on both of its west and east coasts. The project is expected to transport approximately 1.2 million bpd of crude oil from Alberta to refineries in Montreal, Quebec and New Brunswick, with marine terminals for potential export purposes. The project consists of converting a natural gas pipeline to oil, reversing the flows of existing pipelines, and the construction of new pumping stations, tank terminals and marine facilities.
Rositano said, ‘the ability to move incremental volumes of oil to the east coast would also provide export opportunities to both India and Europe, reducing the latter’s dependency on Russian supplies that currently meet about 30% of its energy requirements.’
Further projects
Two more projects have been proposed for the transportation of incremental production from Alberta to Canada’s west coast ports. This would result in the availability of more than 1 million bpd of crude oil for export to the Asia Pacific region.
The Northern Gateway Project involves a crude oil export pipeline and condensate import pipeline between Alberta and a new marine terminal in Kitimat, British Colombia. GlobalData expects this project to transport 525 000 bpd of oilsands crude from Alberta to the Asia Pacific region and US west coast.
Also, an expansion project has been designed to increase the Trans Mountain Pipeline capacity from 300 000 bpd to 890 000 bpd.
Rositano concluded, ‘the Trans Mountain Pipeline Project would involve building 12 new pump stations, 20 new tanks and a new twinned pipeline that will closely follow the existing Trans Mountain right of way. Approval is currently being sought for this development from Canada’s National Energy Board and, if all goes well, construction would start in 2015, with operations commencing in 2017/2018.’
Adapted from press release by Claira Lloyd
Read the article online at: https://www.hydrocarbonengineering.com/gas-processing/27052014/globaldata_canada_oil_exports_infrastructure/
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