Trudeau's Mega Pipeline To Redraw Global Oil Flows

The nearly completed expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline promises to vault Canada into a new role in global markets by transporting an additional 600,000 barrels per day (bpd) — on par with the daily output of Azerbaijan — from the country’s vast oil sands to a port on the Pacific Coast, Lucia Kassai and Robert Tuttle reported for Bloomberg News.

The project had been expected to start operating in the first quarter of next year, but technical challenges in tunneling along a 1.3-kilometer (0.8-mile) stretch have forced the company to seek changes that could delay the startup. I Photo: Alberta Major Projects - Government of Alberta

For Canada’s producers, the government-owned project offers a chance to break their almost total dependence on exports to the US and win higher prices for their crude.

For global markets, the Trans Mountain expansion represents a new source of the heavy, sludgy oil that advanced refineries in India and China crave for producing transportation fuels and asphalt.

The project — which essentially twins an existing 1950s-era pipeline — had been expected to start operating in the first quarter of next year, but technical challenges in tunneling along a 1.3-kilometer (0.8-mile) stretch have forced the company to seek changes that could delay the startup.

A postponement would be an unwelcome development for a project that has already been delayed for years — and seen its costs balloon — because of opposition from environmentalists and indigenous groups.

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