Kinder Morgan Pony Express Pipeline LLC and Belle Fourche Pipeline Co. recently announced an open season for a system to carry Bakken-area crude oil to Oklahoma.
The proposed transportation system would carry 100,000 barrels of oil per day some 1,000 miles from Baker, Mont. just across the state line from Bakken development in North Dakota to Ponca City and Cushing, Okla., as soon as the fourth quarter of 2014.
The open season closes at 5 p.m. MT on June 20. The companies have already secured a long-term anchor shipper commitment for a minimum of 30,000 barrels per day.
Through a separate open season, Pony Express will also offer local service from the Guernsey, Wyo., area and the Denver-Julesburg basin to the Oklahoma destinations.
The project involves a combination of new pipelines and converting existing pipelines.
Belle Fourche Pipeline operates a system that moves about 50,000 bpd from the Powder Rover basin of Wyoming and the Williston basin of North Dakota to Baker, Mont.
The project is one of at least three proposals to connect the Bakken area to Cushing.
In April, Oneok Partners L.P. announced plans to spend between $1.5 billion and $1.8 billion on the Bakken Crude Express Pipeline, a 1,300-mile pipeline to carry up to 200,000 barrels per day of light-sweet crude from Stanley, N.D., to Cushing by 2015.
As producers continue to aggressively develop crude oil from wells in the Bakken Shale, more crude-oil pipeline takeaway capacity will be required. This proposed pipeline will provide producers with efficient and reliable transportation of their product directly to one of the largest crude-oil market hubs in the U.S, said Oneok President Terry Spencer.
Oneok expects to hold an open season this summer or in the early fall.
The Bakken Crude Express would also connect to the DJ basin and Niobrara formation.
And TransCanada Corp. is proposing the Bakken Marketlink to allow 100,000 barrels per day of Bakken-area crude to flow into the proposed and troubled Keystone XL pipeline.
Eric Lidji
