EDMONTON-based Enbridge has renewed plans for a $4-billion pipeline to Canada’s West Coast in response to demand from producers and refiners wanting oilsands-derived crude shipped to Asia, Enbridge’s chief executive said in late February. Canada’s second-largest pipeline operator is understood to have convinced enough potential customers to fund the remaining costs to get the Gateway pipeline project to the regulatory approval stage, CEO Pat Daniel said.
Enbridge mothballed the 400,000brl/d project in late 2006 in order to concentrate on expanding its crude oil pipeline network in the United States. However, now the demand for a pipeline across the Rocky Mountains is coming from a more diverse group than before, Mr Daniel told investors at a conference. "The pull from the other end of Gateway initially was primarily from the Chinese, but in this initiative the Chinese are not participants, and the pull ranges from Japan down to Singapore," he is reported to have said.
In 2005, PetroChina signed an agreement to co-operate with Enbridge on the project to ship extra-heavy crude from Alberta's oilsands deposits to the Pacific Coast. It also agreed to consider signing-up for half the capacity. The plans call for a 1200-km long pipeline from Strathcona County in Alberta to the port of Kitimat in BC with a parallel pipeline transporting condensate in the other direction. At Kitimat, up to 20 tankers a month, including six VLCCs, would ship the oil across the Pacific as well as, possibly, to California.
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