Turn Me Loose – How Canadian Crude Oil Export Capacity Has Struggled to Keep Up With Production

Canadian crude oil production has nearly doubled over the past decade, with nearly all of those gains coming from the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin (WCSB). With those volumes continuing to grow, producers, pipeline companies and politicians are discussing options to add export capacity out of the region. In today’s RBN blog, the second of a series, we review the major pipeline projects that have expanded markets for WCSB barrels since 2010 and how the timing of those pipeline capacity additions lined up with WCSB supply growth.

As we said in Part 1, Canadian production recently hit 5.6 MMb/d, and all but 4% of that output comes from the WCSB. The near doubling of production since 2010 is largely attributable to Alberta’s oil sands, as producers invested heavily in both newbuild and expansion projects, especially from the late 2000s through the mid-2010s. So far this decade, Canadian production growth has been driven more by improved capacity utilization at oil-sands projects and growing conventional heavy oil and condensate production than by major oil-sands capacity expansion projects.

Let’s start by looking at the WCSB’s current export pipeline capacity. Figure 1 below shows the six pipeline systems that transport WCSB crude oil to outside markets, along with other key pipeline systems moving Canadian crude within the U.S. The 3.2-MMb/d Enbridge Mainline system (light-pink lines) moves roughly two-thirds of all WCSB export volumes, transporting an average of nearly 3.1 MMb/d across the North Dakota border in H1 2025. The recently expanded, now 890-Mb/d Trans Mountain system (dark-purple line) is the second-largest system; it moved an average of 730 Mb/d to Pacific markets in H1 2025, while South Bow’s 610-Mb/d Keystone Pipeline (medium-blue line) moved 576 Mb/d across the North Dakota border in the same six months. The remaining three pipelines — Enbridge’s 310-Mb/d Express (medium-pink line), Plains Midstream Canada’s 100-Mb/d Rangeland (dark-green line) and Inter Pipeline’s 20-Mb/d Milk River (light-green line) — together moved around 340 Mb/d across the Montana border in H1 2025.