Pembina’s second quarter earnings call and press release underscored the company’s strong positioning to reap the benefits of anticipated growth in Western Canadian crude oil and natural gas production, which seem to be gaining momentum in recent months with several announcements regarding new capacity projects for oil pipeline egress, LNG capacity, and natural-gas fired power generation.
The past three months has seen Pembina sanction CAD$3 billion of investments in two major growth projects – the 932 MW Greenlight Electricity Centre and the 750 MMcf/d Heartland Extraction Plant, announce its participation as a 10% owner in a proposed new 1 MMb/d West Coast oil pipeline, and start up the 55 Mb/d expansion at its Redwater Fractionation complex.
Regarding condensate growth, management noted on the earnings call that as oil sands production continues to grow, the majority of diluent demand growth is expected to be supplied by Western Canadian condensate production. The company announced that the Cochin diluent import pipeline’s nameplate capacity has been increased by 10 Mb/d to 120 Mb/d (volumes averaged 115 Mb/d in Q1). Pembina expects volumes on Cochin to be lower in the second half of 2026, as some of the firm shippers advanced a greater portion of their annual take-or-pay commitments into the first half of the year, so second half volumes will be more price dependent.
Pembina continues to look at expanding capacity on its 100 Mb/d Nipisi oil pipeline, as the pipeline is now nearly full and operators producing in the nearby Clearwater formation look to continue growing, and has acquired more land near the Greenlight project as it works to position itself to enable future phases of development.
Operationally, second quarter revenue volumes (physical volumes plus unutilized contracted capacity) increased by 1.5% for its Pipelines division, and by 7.6% for its Facilities division, relative to the second quarter of last year.
Source: Pembina Pipeline Corporation
