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Kinder Morgan’s ups and downs
Gary Park For Petroleum News
It was one of those cringe-inducing moments. Just as the top brass at Kinder Morgan were regaling analysts with their grand plans for pipeline projects across North America to take advantage of the rush to drill for liquids in gas-prone regions and to fill a possible void if TransCanada’s Keystone XL project topples off the shelf, one of the company’s grand ventures was taking a black eye in Vancouver.
The company is in the thick of an open season pointing to a second-quarter decision on doubling capacity to 600,000 barrels per day on its Trans Mountain pipeline from Alberta to the Port of Vancouver and Washington State.
Ian Anderson, the president of Kinder Morgan’s Canadian unit, said he is “optimistic” about the attempts to entice shippers to accept long-term contracts on Trans Mountain.
“Oil sands production (the main source of supply for the pipeline) will continue to increase, there is no doubt about that,” he said. “Market access is the topic of the day in Calgary.”
And Trans Mountain, given its established 300,000 bpd system, could suddenly emerge as the preferred choice if TransCanada’s Keystone XL and Enbridge’s Northern Gateway projects face lengthy delays.
Currently, an average 10,000 bpd is shipped by tanker — some of its destined for Asia — from Kinder Morgan’s Westridge dock in the Port of Vancouver.
Kinder Morgan spill But opponents of the Trans Mountain expansion plans, or any other pipeline carrying oil sands crude across British Columbia, got a freebie from Kinder Morgan on Jan. 24, when 100,000 liters (about 26,400 U.S. liquid gallons) spilled at the company’s Abbotsford crude oil terminal in the Greater Vancouver area.
Kinder Morgan and the British Columbia government were quick to downplay the incident, noting the spill remained in containment tanks and posed no threat to public health or the environment.
However, it added to a series of Kinder Morgan-related incidents — a 234,000-liter blowout in 2007 when a construction crew ruptured a Kinder Morgan line in a residential area; a 200,000-liter spill in 2009 when the crude was captured in a lined containment bay; and a 2011 shutdown of Trans Mountain after small leaks were discovered 90 miles west of Edmonton.
A Kinder Morgan spokeswoman said the big issue in the latest spill was “nuisance odors for our neighbors … in the big scheme of things, it really isn’t a significant issue.”
But environmentalists said the event should point to the inherent risks associated with an expansion of Trans Mountain.
“This should be a reminder to people that there is a very serious risk of oil spills when you’ve got oil pipelines and oil tankers,” said Ben West, a spokesman for the Wilderness Committee.
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