|
Enbridge sticks to knitting
Gary Park For Petroleum News
However much its Michigan pipeline rupture and the challenge of restarting shipments might have diverted attention at Enbridge, it’s also business as usual at the Canadian pipeline company.
In just over the past year, Enbridge has announced about C$2.3 billion in commercially secured projects to expand and extend its regional oil sands system in northern Alberta, with three projects rolled out in the last two weeks.
The latest is a C$475 million pipeline and related terminal services for Husky Energy’s Sunrise project.
The 24-inch-diameter line will cover about 67 miles from the Sunrise site, with initial capacity of 90,000 barrels per day, expandable to 270,000 bpd.
Operations are expected to start in the second half of 2013 under a 20-year agreement that Husky can extend for additional five-year terms up to 45 years.
Enbridge said the companies will split the net revenues from third-party volumes transported through the pipelines.
Enbridge Chief Executive Officer Pat Daniel said the project brings to eight the number that will be connected to his company’s network over the next three years.
Link from Suncor plant Less than a week earlier, Enbridge announced it will build a C$375 million link from a Suncor Energy plant to its existing pipeline system.
The 57-mile line will connect a terminal to the existing Waupisoo line that delivers oil sands crude to the Edmonton-area hub, running parallel to the Athabasca line Suncor currently uses.
Waupisoo and Athabasca already tap into projects operated by Suncor, ConocoPhillips and Cenovus Energy, while Statoil’s Liesmer project was recently added as a shipper.
Enbridge is also building new processing and shipping infrastructure for the Kearl oil sands project being developed by Imperial Oil and ExxonMobil (which owns 69.6 percent of Imperial).
The new 30-inch-diameter Wood Buffalo line is due to start service by mid-2013.
In addition, Enbridge is expanding the Athabasca line to accommodate recent shipping commitments by Cenovus at a cost of C$185 million.
Athabasca, in service since March 2009, transports crude oil over 325 miles to the mainline hub at Hardisty in east-central Alberta.
Its capacity will be 430,000 bpd by the third quarter of 2013 and is capable of expansion to 570,000 bpd by the third quarter of 2014.
Waupisoo, a 230-mile system in operation since June 2008, has annual capacity of up to 600,000 bpd to Edmonton.
| 