Southern Lights

Enbridge is taking a serious look at converting its Southern Lights pipeline, which currently transports  diluent northwest from Illinois to Alberta, to a 150-Mb/d crude oil pipe that would flow southeast. The potential reversal of Southern Lights is made possible by the facts that Western Canadian production of natural gasoline and condensate — two leading diluents — has been rising fast, and that demand for piped-in diluent from the Lower 48 is on the wane. Alberta producers could sure use more crude pipeline capacity out of the region — and getting crude down to the U.S. Midwest would give them good access to a variety of markets. With Western Canadian diluent production increasing fast, maybe Kinder Morgan’s Cochin Pipeline, another diluent carrier, could also be flipped to crude service later on. Today, we consider how Southern Lights’ conversion/reversal might help.

Production of lease condensate at the wellhead and plant condensate from processing natural gas liquids (NGLs) has increased rapidly in the Ohio Utica over the past two years. Timely investment by local refiner Marathon and infrastructure developments to ship condensate to Gulf Coast refiners have proved the primary market for Utica condensate so far. The proximity of the region to diluent pipelines to Canada has also prompted infrastructure projects. Today we describe projects to deliver condensate to Alberta.

Canadian production of diluent range light hydrocarbon materials such as natural gasoline and condensate are not currently meeting demand from the oil sands region. Diluent is used to reduce the viscosity of heavy Canadian crude so that it can flow to market in pipelines. Diluent supplies required to supplement Canada’s domestic output are nearly all imported from the U.S. via two pipelines that originate in the Midwest. Those pipelines are mostly supplied with diluent sourced from the Gulf Coast. Today we look at how imported diluent gets to Western Canada.

Output of naphtha range material such as plant condensates and natural gasoline in the Ohio section of the Utica shale is increasing rapidly as new processing and fractionation capacity in the region comes online. Output of field condensate from the wellhead is also expected to take off in 2014. These light hydrocarbons will be delivered to market by a combination of pipeline, rail and barge infrastructure. Today we look at pipeline infrastructure plans to deliver condensates and natural gasoline to Canada as diluent.