Keystone XL

More Canadian heavy crude barrels are on their way to the U.S. Gulf Coast and some, if not most, of that oil could be taking a somewhat circuitous route — through the Rocky Mountain states. Today, we discuss highlights from RBN’s new multiclient study on this important topic, developed with Plainview Energy Analytics.

More Canadian heavy crude barrels are on their way to the U.S. Gulf Coast and some, if not most, of that oil could be taking a somewhat circuitous route — through the Rocky Mountain states. Today, we discuss highlights from RBN’s new multiclient study on this important topic, developed with Plainview Energy Analytics.

A subsidiary of Bridger Pipeline is planning a 36-inch-diameter crude oil pipeline that would move up to 550 Mb/d of Canadian barrels 645 miles from the U.S.-Canada border to Guernsey, WY. The idea is to push crude south via existing rights-of-way, possibly reviving parts of Keystone XL in Alberta. 

How do you sum up a year like 2021? It was good times for the economic health of producers and midstreamers alike. Prices were up, as were production and flows. But 2021 also brought along more than its share of chaos, including disruptive market events like Winter Storm Uri’s deep freeze and Europe’s natural gas crisis, along with general perplexity around all things clean, green, renewable, and certified. At RBN we take a different approach to assessing common industry themes. Namely, we examine the events and trends that the market considers the most important — crowd-sourced market intelligence, if you will. We can do that because every weekday we post a blog covering a single topic and blast it to almost 35,000 people, and we scrupulously monitor the website hit rate to see which blogs garner the most interest. Then, at the end of the year, we look back to see which topics rank at the top of the hit parade. That score reveals a lot about major market trends. So today we dive into our Top 10 blogs based on the number of rbnenergy.com website hits over the past year to see what we can learn about where things stand today and what’s up next.

Late last month, the Canada Energy Regulator (CER) ruled against Enbridge’s proposal to convert as much as 90% of the capacity on its multi-pipeline, 3-MMb/d Mainline crude oil system to long-term contracts. The CER’s action leaves in place the Mainline’s current capacity-allocation process, under which every barrel-per-day of the pipeline system’s capacity is open to all shipping customers on a month-to-month basis. Although the rejection of Enbridge’s proposal is unlikely to change the volume of Western Canadian crude oil flowing on the Mainline over the next few months, the longer-term outlook for Mainline flows is less certain given that other, competing pipeline capacity out of Alberta will be coming into service by late 2022 or early 2023. In today’s RBN blog, we examine the decision to reject long-term contracting and what might be the next steps for Enbridge.

U.S. presidential transitions often bring policy changes, but few have been as dramatic and swift as the shift in energy policy that came with President Biden’s inauguration in January. Among his first acts after being sworn in was the signing of an executive order that revoked the Presidential Permit for TC Energy’s long-planned Keystone XL crude oil pipeline. Among other impacts, the move put on ice more than one-third of the Canadian midstream giant’s C$37 billion capital spending program for the 2021-24 period and unraveled TC Energy’s plan to balance its natural-gas-weighted pipeline portfolio with more crude oil pipes. So, what’s next for the midstreamer now that KXL is a no-go? In today’s blog, we’ll discuss highlights from our new Spotlight report on TC Energy which lays out how the company arrived at this juncture and where it goes from here.

Sure, there was at least some hope among Keystone XL’s supporters that President Biden might back away from his promise to kill the much-maligned crude oil pipeline project. After all, KXL developer TC Energy had done all it could to make the 1,210-mile project more palatable to the incoming administration by making Canadian First Nation groups partners in the project, reaching a favorable labor agreement with the four U.S. unions that would build the pipeline, and, most recently, committing to invest in renewable energy to power KXL’s pumps and other equipment. But it wasn’t enough, and now, with Biden’s decision to revoke the project’s Presidential Permit, it appears that the Alberta-to-Nebraska pipeline is all but dead, and that Western Canada will need to get by without its 830 Mb/d of southbound capacity. The looming question now is, what does that mean for Alberta’s producers — particularly those that have signed up for more than 500 Mb/d of space on KXL? Today, we discuss what’s ahead.

For most of the past few years, crude oil producers in Alberta have dealt with pipeline constraints that often forced them to sell their crude at steep discounts. While the constraints eased somewhat earlier this year as producers reduced their output due to cratering oil demand and oil prices, production more recently has been rebounding, resulting in the return of takeaway concerns. The big hope is that long-planned pipeline projects like the Trans Mountain Expansion (TMX) and Keystone XL will finally be built and commissioned, but they still face legal and regulatory hurdles before being completed. Lately, a different option has gained momentum focusing on a proposed rail line linking Alaska to the immense oil sands region of northern Alberta, potentially creating another corridor for the export of oil sands crude. Today, we describe recent developments in a bold plan to build a rail line from Alberta, across northern Canada, and into Alaska.