July 2014, Vol. 69 No. 7
Newsline
Canada Takes Action To Ensure Infrastructure Projects For Crude Exports
According to Carmine Rositano, GlobalData’s managing analyst covering downstream oil and gas, Canada is developing infrastructure projects, including the proposed East Energy Access Pipeline Projects, on both of its west and east coasts.
GlobalData expects East Energy Access Pipeline Projects to transport about 1.2 million barrels per day 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 says: “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 percent of its energy requirements.”
Furthermore, two major 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 one mmbd of crude oil for export to the Asia-Pacific region, according to GlobalData.
The Northern Gateway Project involves a crude oil export pipeline and condensate import pipeline between Alberta and a new marine terminal in Kitimat, British Columbia. GlobalData expects this project to transport 525,000 barrels per day of oil sands crude from Alberta to the Asia-Pacific region and U.S. west coast.
Additionally, an expansion project has been designed to increase the Trans Mountain Pipeline capacity from 300 thousand barrels per day (mbd) to 890 mbd.
“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,” concludes the analyst.
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