Community | March 06, 2010 | 4 comments

Oilsands pipelines from Canada to US give us our fix

source: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601207&Sid=aZS87cljdOms

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JanforGore
Enbridge Energy Partners LP, the Houston-based pipeline partnership controlled by Canada’s largest pipeline company, said it may take seven years to fill new crude oil pipelines from Canada to the U.S. because of excess capacity.

“It may be 2017 before we see all the pipes that are being planned to be full,” said Stephen Letwin, managing director of Enbridge Energy Co., the general partner of Enbridge Energy Partners, during an interview at Bloomberg headquarters in New York. “The fact that these pipes are not filling until 2017 is not critical because we know we are going to get our value back.”

The Clipper operates under a so-called common carrier agreement, where shippers nominate deliveries to the pipeline and tolls increase if volumes decrease. Enbridge will collect about $180 million a year from its shippers regardless of the volume shipped. If the pipeline runs at reduced rates shippers will pay a higher price per barrel.

It will take about 6.4 million barrels to fill the pipeline and that will “likely be later in the year or even next year,” Mark Maki, the company’s chief financial officer, said.

The Clipper, which runs 1,000 miles (1,607 kilometers) from Hardisty, Alberta, to Superior, Wisconsin, can be increased in capacity to 800,000 barrels a day, according to the company’s Web site.

Keystone Pipeline

The line faces competition from a pipeline built by Calgary-based TransCanada Corp. Its Keystone Pipeline System runs from Hardisty, Alberta, to Wood River and Patoka, Illinois, and can transport 435,000 barrels a day. Commercial operations on Keystone are scheduled to begin in the middle of the year.

Pipelines carrying Canadian crude to the U.S. will operate at 59 percent of capacity by 2013, Chad Friess, an analyst with UBS Securities Canada Inc., said in an e-mail last week. Pipeline capacity is expected to reach 4 million barrels a day while Western Canadian exports to the U.S. are estimated to reach 2.3 million a day at the same time, he said, citing the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.
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4 comments // Oilsands pipelines from Canada to US give us our fix

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  • JanforGore
  • JanforGore
  • JanforGore
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      JanforGore  

    • Why don't we hear about this in any of Obama's so called "clean energy" speeches? Because it would show them all for the hypocrites and smoke blowers they are. Can you imagine the Co2 emissions and toxic waste associated with pumping this much crude to us from Canada daily? No wonder we failed in Copenhagen.

      And why are those who previously and rightfully criticized oilsands as the environmentally destructive force it is silent now? Those who claimed this American addiction to oil was tantamount to being a drug addict looking for veins in their toes to get their fix. It matters not who is in the White House continuing this policy, it is still the same. American oil addicts doing anything to get their fix, even at the expense of our own sustainability.

    • 2 years ago
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