CP

The battle between pipeline and rail transport alternatives to get growing crude supplies out of Western Canada is heating up. On Thursday (August 1, 2013) TransCanada confirmed plans to proceed with repurposing their Mainline gas pipeline into the Energy East crude pipeline that will now carry up to 1.1 MMb/d from Alberta to Eastern Canadian refiners and the export market. A day earlier Kinder Morgan and Keyera announced plans to build a unit train loading terminal in Alberta to increase crude by rail capacity to the US. Today we review Canadian rail infrastructure investment plans.

The dramatic growth in North Dakota crude by rail during 2012 included large unit train terminals built to load 80 Mb/d or more. At the same time smaller companies successfully operated alongside the big guys – loading manifest trains at out-of-the-way terminals. North of the border in Saskatchewan, Canadian railroads are advertising their terminal facilities but most have limited capacity. Today we continue our crude by rail series with a look at the plethora [1] of smaller Bakken terminals.

The US crude by rail industry has expanded rapidly since January 2011 as domestic crude production soared by 1.4 MMb/d over the same period. The growth of crude by rail followed pipeline bottlenecks in the Midwest that caused landlocked inland crudes to be discounted by upwards of $20/Bbl versus coastal destinations. That made shipping oil by rail to the coast a viable proposition in the absence of new pipeline capacity. Crude rail terminals in the Bakken now load over 400 Mb/d for shipment to coastal markets. Today we continue our survey of Bakken crude rail loading terminals.