Alberta oil companies test overseas markets with tanker deliveries
More and longer voyages test global sales potential
While holding off on making permanent commitments, Alberta oil merchants are trying out overseas markets with sample tanker deliveries. Loadings at the Westridge dock in Vancouver have reached 134,000 barrels a day or up to a dozen ships per month.
“It’s global reach and we’re seeing more and more of it all the time,” reports Kinder Morgan Canada Inc. president Ian Anderson. His firm is gradually opening wider, in step with industry demand, Alberta’s oil window on the sea at the end of its Trans Mountain Pipeline from Edmonton to Vancouver.
Besides Korea, China and areas along the west coast of the United States not served by export pipelines, Alberta oil has sailed to a refinery in Chile for the first time, Anderson says. More exotic ports may also be reached secretly. On tankers, production can go anywhere. Ultimate destinations are not always revealed or known at the start of voyages.
The accelerating traffic prompted a move to increase deliveries without raising the number of tankers sailing along the environmentally touchy west coast. Harbor pilots were trained in navigating safely deep courses through Vancouver for more heavily loaded vessels. The port’s permitted tanker hull draft was deepened to 13.5 meters from 12 meters. A move to 15 meters is contemplated. Each draft increase adds 30,000 barrels to a tanker load and pares 30 cents a barrel off freight rates by spreading ship costs thinner. Big cargos make tankers competitive with pipelines, Anderson says.
Former premier Peter Lougheed is among armchair captains of the Alberta oil industry who urge it to develop overseas markets as a hedge against environmental and commercial risks of relying solely on the U.S. for export sales. “I would do that,” he said after addressing an international engineering conference hosted by the University of Calgary.
But rival, multibillion-dollar pipeline and supertanker projects – Kinder Morgan’s TMX and Enbridge Inc.’s Gateway – remain in early stages of jockeying for industry subscriptions to new delivery capacity. No commitments have been disclosed yet. “That will come later than sooner,” Anderson predicts. It will take until some time after 2015 for demand to justify building new overseas export facilities, agrees Enbridge major projects vice-president Al Monaco.
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