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.
<p>Tallgrass Energy Partners’ Pony Express Pipeline provides capacity to move 230 Mb/d of Bakken crude oil received at Guernsey, WY all the way to the mega-hub at Cushing, OK, making it one of the most important pipeline corridors out of the Williston Basin.</p>
Crude production in the Niobrara shale formation is focused on two areas, the Denver-Julesburg (DJ) Basin in Northeast Colorado and the Powder River Basin (PRB) in Wyoming. Production has expanded in both basins (current output is about 435 Mb/d according to the Energy Information Administration) but much of the recent volume growth has come from the DJ basin. Expectations as recently as last year that production would expand to over 700 Mb/d in the next 4 years have been tempered by the crude price crash. A couple of large pipeline projects prompted last year by those production expectations have been cancelled since but others are still being built. Today we assess crude takeaway infrastructure in the DJ basin.
The Denver-Julesburg (DJ) Basin of the Niobrara shale in Northeast Colorado is one of the hottest crude plays around at the moment. RBN expects DJ Basin crude production to nearly double from 235 Mb/d in August 2014 to 450 Mb/d by the end of 2019 – an increase of 215 Mb/d. That growing production has sparked an infrastructure-planning spree with 4 pipeline project announcements in the last two months that could add a whopping 600 Mb/d of takeaway capacity from the DJ to Cushing by 2017. On top of that rail-loading capacity is also expanding in the DJ. Today we describe the new midstream expansion plans.
Crude production from the Denver Julesburg (DJ) and Powder River Basin (PRB) plays in the Niobrara shale in Colorado and Wyoming is up 260 percent to 361 Mb/d since January 2012 and is expected to double again by the end of 2019. Takeaway capacity is expanding but is complicated by crude streams travelling through the region from Canada and North Dakota. Rising condensate production also presents a challenge to midstream companies. New pipeline proposals to expand takeaway from the DJ by as much as 500 Mb/d have recently surfaced – suggesting that local producers are looking to secure capacity. Today we look at recent and planned expansions to Niobrara takeaway capacity.
New crude oil pipelines expected online this fall are set to unlock congestion in the Rockies that has built up over the past three years. During that time, growing volumes of Canadian, Bakken and local production have descended on the Guernsey, WY trading hub that is the regional crude distribution center. The new pipelines will increase takeaway capacity from North Dakota and Montana to Cushing via Guernsey. They will also make room for more Canadian barrels travelling to market through the Rockies and for rising local production. Today in the first of a two part series we look at the existing and new pipeline infrastructure into and out of Guernsey.
The latest Energy Information Administration (EIA) April 2013 short term energy outlook forecasts US crude oil production to increase from an average of 6.5 MMb/d in 2012 to 7.9 MMb/d in 2014. Surging crude production needs to find routes to market – and often competes for pipeline space with growing Canadian imports. New crude pipelines are taking too long to build. At the same time many natural gas pipelines are flowing far beneath capacity because new gas production nearer to market makes them redundant. Converting these natural gas pipelines to crude oil use where geography allows is a potential win-win. Today we look at gas to crude pipeline conversion economics.
