2 days ago
Swift News
A little more than one year after completing construction of the Trans Mountain expansion oil pipeline, the crown corporation is pursuing two different methods to increase how much oil can be exported.
The move comes at a time when the pipeline still isn't operating at full capacity.
The $34-billion expansion project began transporting oil from Edmonton to the Vancouver area in May 2024. Currently, the pipeline is operating at about 80-85 per cent of its capacity, Trans Mountain officials say.
The plan was to only begin looking at possible increases to the pipeline in about 2028, but the timeline was sped up as oil production in Alberta continues to climb.
The physical size of the pipeline won't change, but the crown corporation is exploring the use of drag reducing agents to increase the amount of oil that can be transported. A second project would explore building stronger pumping stations to push more oil through the pipe.
The drag reducing agents are chemicals that would have a relatively low price tag, said Todd Stack, Trans Mountain's chief financial officer, and should result in about a 5-10 per cent increase in capacity or about 50,000-85,000 extra barrels of oil per day.
Adding more pumping power would be more expensive and take longer to complete, said Stack, estimating the cost at about $3 billion to $4 billion. The crown corporation will spend the next year exploring the optimization project before making a final investment decision next year, followed by what would be another few years of construction.
"I'm not actually concerned," said Stack about funding the optimization, since the cost of the project could be paid with profits generated from current operations or through adding debt.
The federal government will have to approve the projects before Trans Mountain would proceed, said Stack.
