Why Trans Mountain wants to expand when the oil pipeline is also not complete
After a year, a year after completing the construction of the Trans Mountain expansion oil pipeline, the Crown Corporation is following two different methods to increase how much oil can be exported.
This step comes at a time when the pipeline is still not working with full capacity.
Trans Mountain officials say that in May 2024, the $ 34 billion expansion project started transporting oil from Admonton to Vancouver region. Currently, the pipeline is running at about 80–85 percent of its capacity.
The plan was only to start looking at the possible growth in the pipeline only in 2028, but the timeline was extended in Alberta as oil production.
The physical size of the pipeline will not change, but the Crown Corporation is searching for the use of drag -reducing agents to increase the amount of oil carrying the trans carry. A second project will detect the construction of strong pumping stations to push more oil through pipes.
Tod Stack, the Chief Financial Officer of the Trans Mountain, said that the drag-reducing agents are chemicals that have a relatively low price tag, and as a result an increase of about 5–10 percent in capacity or about 50,000-85,000 additional barrel oils per day.
Adding more pumping power will be more expensive and it will take longer to complete, stack said, the cost estimate is estimated to be around $ 3 billion to $ 4 billion. The Crown Corporation will spend the next year in search of the adaptation project before the final investment decision next year, followed by some more years of construction.
“I’m not really worried,” said about the funding of adaptation, because the cost of the project can be paid with the profits generated from the current tasks or through adding a loan.
Stack said that the federal government would have to approve the projects before the Trans Mountain proceeds.
The total capacity of the extended Trans Mountain Pipeline is 890,000 barrels.
The Crown Corporation is on track to return $ 1.25 billion to Ottawa via interest, fee and dividend by the end of the year.
So far, everything is running smoothly with the trans mountain expansion and it is “luxurious” working, “he said.
The export terminal in Burnaby, BC is designed to handle 34 tankers a month, but is still running close to 23 ships per month. Stack said ships are being filled with only 70 percent.
The Vancouver Fraser Port Authority has said that initial work is underway to drag the bird inlet to adjust the oil tankers.
Oil production is increasing fuel By the sometimes expanded oil industry in northern Alberta. The production of oysand is at speed to reach all-time high this year as output is expected to increase by five percent in 2025 compared to last year.
No new large-scale oil facilities are being made, but in the next five years, the development of relatively small expansion and corrections piles from at least a dozen different companies from Cenovas, Suncor, Konocophilips, Meg Energy, CNOC, Imperial Oil, Canadian natural resources and strata-old resources.
Without any adaptation projects by pipeline companies, according to the consultancy RBN Energy of an energy market, there may be a lack of oil exports from western Canada in the middle of 2027.
The pipeline companies such as the Nabridge and the South Bo, Canadian company operating the keystone system, are searching for how to export oil with the existing infrastructure.
If Trans Mountain and other pipeline companies pursue the proposed reforms, there should be enough space to export oil from western Canada for the next five years, stack said.
“We are good by 2030,” he said, while on stage at an energy conference in Calgary last week.
This year, Oylasand production is expected to be 3.5 million barrels on an average per day. According to RBN Energy, by 2030, production may increase by 500,000 barrels per day, due to all the new projects in the region.
The completion of the Trans Mountain Expensing Project last year has increased by 13 percent in the total western Canadian crude oil export capacity and the export capacity to Tidwatter in western Canada has increased by about 700 percent, according to A. Report The Canada was released on Wednesday by the Energy Regulator.
The regulator said that as a result of the pipeline, the raw-by-rail exports of Canada have also not been seen for more than a decade.
Statistics new data from Canada Show The oil pipeline shipment from Alberta to British Columbia increased by more than five times (+449.9 percent) during the first 12 months of the extended Trans Mountain Project.
