TMX Crude Oil Shippers Ring Alarm Bells

Western Canada’s Trans Mountain Expansion Project, better-known as TMX, has experienced more than its share of setbacks over the past 10 years: environmental protests, legal challenges, financing issues, an ownership change, and even a serious flooding event in 2021. But it seems the 590-Mb/d expansion of the now-300-Mb/d Trans Mountain Pipeline (TMP) system will finally become a reality by early 2024, enabling large-scale exports of Alberta-sourced crude oil to Asian markets. There’s a catch, though. The project’s long delays and other issues resulted in massive cost overruns that are now being reflected in the preliminary tolls for the soon-to-be-combined Trans Mountain system. The proposed toll increase is so large that it will cost a similar amount to ship heavy crude oil to tidewater on Trans Mountain as it would on the competing Enbridge system to the U.S. Gulf Coast for “re-export,” despite the latter being three times the distance. In today’s blog, we discuss the history of the Trans Mountain expansion, its cost overruns and the calculations that went into the proposed tolls — the kicker being that those tolls could end up being even higher.

With Western Canadian crude oil production rising, available pipeline takeaway capacity shrinking and crude-by-rail volumes rebounding, midstream companies are ramping up their efforts to get long-planned pipeline projects built. But that’s no easy task. Virtually every plan to add new takeaway capacity out of Alberta — Canada’s #1 energy-producing province — continues to face regulatory hurdles, and it remains to be seen which of the pipeline projects will be completed, and when. We can’t just throw up our hands, though, and say, “Who knows?” With pipeline constraints out of Western Canada worsening by the month and having profound negative effects on the price of Western Canadian Select (WCS), there’s real value in reviewing in some detail what these pipeline projects are up against. Today, we discuss what’s being planned on the takeaway front and where these projects stand.

It seems that, once again, Canada is struggling to build crude oil pipeline export capacity fast enough to keep pace with production growth. The latest setback came with the announcement that completion of the Canadian government-owned Trans Mountain Expansion (TMX) will be delayed until the third quarter of 2023 and that the 590-Mb/d project will cost almost twice as much as previously estimated. The latest six-to-nine-month delay appears to set the Canadian oil industry on a path to exhausting its spare export capacity by later this year. And that’s not good news for producers. In today’s RBN blog, we consider this latest TMX announcement and what it might mean for pipeline constraints and heavy oil price differentials.