Could oilsands crude be shipped in the Atlantic sooner than the Pacific?

A map of the Portland-Montreal pipeline.
From the surprisingly detailed Wikipedia article.

So what will be the first port to put oilsands crude on the water (not to be confused with in the water, knock on wood)? Well according to this article, if the Portland-Montreal-Pipeline company has anything to say about it, it might be in Portland, Maine, that bitumen finally takes to the seas. It's a bit confusing, but it appears the company is owned by Suncor, Imperial and Shell.

US State Department says Keystone won't increase oilsands production

Pipe for the original Keystone pipeline, 2008
Picture from Eric Hylden via CTV

A report released by the US State Department has opined that building the Keystone XL pipeline "won't have a major impact on Alberta's oilsands development". This is a tacit acknowledgement that the real reason for opposition to the pipeline isn't the risk that the pipeline itself poses (the report says it is no riskier than any other mode of transportation), but that it would encourage greater development of what is widely perceived as a dirty fuel. Saying that Keystone won't increase development is thus a strange way of hinting that they're getting ready to approve it, and indeed State Department approval was apparently a major hurdle the pipeline needed to get over.

TransCanada and PetroChina plan Grand Rapids pipeline from Fort Mac to Edmonton

This child, who may be Asian but also
may be Mexican, is  clearly hatching
an evil plan. PetroChina is definitely
 Asian and may or may not be hatching
a similarly dastardly scheme with this
pipeline.

TransCanada and Phoenix Energy Holdings (a unit of PetroChina) plan to build the "Grand Rapids Pipeline",  a 500 km (300 mi) pipeline from Fort McMurray to Edmonton. It would carry 900,000 barrels per day of crude (!!) and 330,000 barrels per day of diluent. It would cost $3 billion and come online by 2017.

Keystone being built, in Arkansas!

The Keystone XL proposed route. Arkansas is to the
right of Oklahoma.

Today I learned the Keystone XL pipeline is already being built! Unfortunately, it's in Arkansas. Welspun Tubular has made about 800 km of pipe for the line in Little Rock. If it can't clear the backlog it says it will start laying off workers.  

TransCanada to make its first oil sands pipeline

TransCanada has been selected to built a 90 km oil sands pipeline between the Fort Hills Mine and the Voyageur Upgrader. Fort Hills is a 60-20-20 joint venture between Suncor, Total and Teck Resources. Voyageur is a 50-50 joint venture between Total and Suncor.

The "Northern Courier" pipeline is expected to cost $660 million and carry 190,000 barrels per day. They have a "tentative target" start date of mid-2013, but it sounds like that's going to be pushed back. It's been a big few weeks for TransCanada, which also received approval for the southern portion of the Keystone XL pipeline from the US government recently. I'm surprised to learn that they do not have any operating oil sands pipelines at the moment.

Southern part of Keystone XL approved

Map from shortformblog.com

The last "key approval" for the section of TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline was received last week. The section runs from the oil hub at Cushing, Oklahoma to Nederland, Texas on the gulf coast. 

This 400 mile part of the pipeline is apparently now called "the Gulf Coast Project". It's projected to cost $2.3 billion and create 4,000 jobs, it's not clear how many of those would be permanent.  This press release has a breakdown of jobs expected to be created.

Enbridge has pipeline failure, spills 1400 barrels near Elk Point, Alberta

A map of the pipeline route
and spill location.
From seankheraj.com

On Monday, Enbridge had a 1,450 barrel leak from its Athabasca Pipeline near Elk Point about 120 miles east of Edmonton.

CBC article explores exporting Alberta oil through east coast

The CBC has published a story investigating the possibility of shipping Alberta's oil sands oil east, rather than west or south as conventional wisdom generally holds. It specifically discusses TransCanada Pipeline's idea of converting one of its natural gas pipelines to bitumen. The article suggests that considering the difficulties companies have faced building or expanding pipelines to the west coast (Northern Gateway, Trans Mountain) or the US (Keystone XL) it may be faster and of relatively similar cost to transport the oil for refining and export in the east.

Canadian heavy crude exports are trading for significantly less than WTI, partly because it is "bottled up" with limited pipeline access to the US gulf coast and other refineries, and virtually no pipeline access to other markets. This differential costs Canadian exporters billions of dollars a year and is given as a major reason for Canada's drive for market diversification.

Incidentally, the CBC does not disappoint with an array of staggeringly ignorant reader comments.

Seaway Pipeline reversed ahead of schedule - higher prices for Canadian oil to come?

The Seaway Pipeline, which runs between Jones Creek, south of Houston, and Cushing, Oklahoma, a major oil hub, is being reversed, and the first oil to be sent down it is being sold. It will now ship 150,000 barrels per day in the other direction, to be increased to 400,000 barrels per day with improvements. The pipeline is owned by Enbridge and Enterprise Production Partners, who have also recently suggested twinning the pipeline which could bring capacity up to 800,000 barrels per day. 

A little history on why this is happening, and why it relates to the oil sands follows.

Access pipeline expansion relatively smooth sailing

To continue in this vein of pipeline stories, here's one on the billion dollar expansion of MEG Energy and Devon Energy's Access Pipeline system. The "Northeast Expansion" is not expected to run into the kinds of regulatory troubles that have so far shelved Northern Gateway and Keystone XL, largely because it's internal to Alberta and follows existing right of ways. The proposed new pipeline will be 42" in diameter and is referred to as "Great Dane size", apparently because they like to measure pipelines by the size of the biggest animal you can fit in them. Don't let this metrication fool you, however. As far as I can gather the operators intend to ship blended bitumen down the pipeline, not animals,  but it's nice to know they have the option.

The existing Access Pipeline consists of a 24" blended bitumen line running from the Conklin area (home to prolific SAGD operations such as Christina Lake and Foster Creek) through Lac La Biche (near Devon's Jackfish) to Edmonton and a 17" diluent line bringing diluent the other way. The new line will follow the same, or very similar, path.

The article says the line will eventually carry more than a million barrels a day, but this information package says it will initially only carry 350,000 barrels a day.

Kinder Morgan plan to expand Trans Mountain Pipeline

I'm a little late posting it, but last month Kinder Morgan announced that it is interested in almost tripling the size of its Trans Mountain pipeline running from Edmonton to Vancouver. The upgrade is a larger version of its previous plan to increase from the current 300 to 600 thousands barrels per day. The new plan would increase it to 850 thousand barrels per day. The expansion is expected to cost $5 billion. The existing pipeline is currently the only way to get Alberta crude to the west coast.

From a regulatory perspective, expanding the pipeline would likely be much easier than constructing the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline, because it would use existing right of ways. The only hiccups are complaints from Vancouver about increased tanker traffic. Tankers have been operating in Vancouver for over 60 years, but the larger pipeline would of course involve more of them.

This Washington Post opinion article talks about how alternatives such as this make opposition to Keystone XL in the US self defeating - the high price of oil will make Canada get oil sands oil to market somehow, and by opposing Keystone Americans are encouraging that market to be somewhere other than the US.

Proposed oil sands pipeline map

From the article.

"Inside Climate News" has an interesting summary of existing and planned oil sands pipelines. They claim that current export capacity is set to triple to 3.1 million barrels per day, but at first glance it looks like they might be double counting oil that travels in one pipeline and then another.