Slow but steady evolution towards putting Alberta oil sands production on global markets aboard supertankers is taking an official step forward. The Northern Gateway Pipeline Project has received formal recognition as a contender to complete the long journey into construction from the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency and the National Energy Board. The authorities are putting finishing touches on a joint review panel with a mandate to consider all aspects of the development, from its economics and engineering to potential effects on the land and water along the proposed 1,170-kilometer route from Edmonton to a new supertanker dock at Kitimat on British Columbia’s Pacific coast.

Although Northern Gateway remains in preliminary design stages, favorable action to clear up a key issue already emerged from national discussions on creating the joint review panel. In response to a widespread but mistaken historical perception among opponents of the pipeline and oil sands development, the federal government has ruled there is no moratorium or ban on tanker traffic in B.C. coastal waters. As a result, the marine shipping part of the regulatory review will have a tight focus on vessel navigation in the Kitimat area.

The Northern Gateway plan includes two pipelines in a single right-of-way: a jumbo pipe for 525,000 barrels a day westbound from the oil sands, and a smaller eastbound line for imports of gasoline-like condensate used as thinner needed to make the Alberta bitumen flow. As resisting native communities and environmental groups prepare demands and potential appeals to the law courts for a halt to the ocean oil sands export scheme, Northern Gateway also faces commercial competition.

A rival plan for a new route to Kitimat, the TMX Project, continues to be advanced by Kinder Morgan as an addition to the 58-year-old Trans Mountain Pipeline between Edmonton and Vancouver.

Location: British Columbia and Alberta | Sponsors: Enbridge Inc. (Northern Gateway Version) and Kinder Morgan Canada (Rival TMX Project) | Cost: $4.5 Billion

Delivery capacity will hit 1.1 million barrels per day on the direct express pipeline for oil sands exports to refineries on the Texas and Louisiana shores of the Gulf of Mexico when the Keystone XL Project is built. Owners and supporters of the route pressed ahead on its development through the economic slump caused by the 2008-09 global credit and energy contraction, in anticipation of growth resuming in Alberta’s northern bitumen belt.

Rising oil sands exports are expected to replace dwindling deliveries from Mexico and especially Venezuela. Latin American supplies, previously a mainstay of U.S. imports, are shrinking because revenues of government-owned oil companies go into welfare state programs instead of new drilling and economic nationalist policies discourage private industry.

Total Canadian investment in the oil export express route to the Gulf coast will top $12 billion by the time the 3,200-kilometer Keystone XL project is built. A target date of 2012 is set for completing the system, following regulatory approvals and a start on construction scheduled for this year. The new facilities will about double delivery capacity on a pipeline network built since 2008 with development propelled at a brisk pace by strong prices, demand and outlooks for Alberta oil.

Location: lberta, Saskatchewan, Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas | Sponsors: Transcanada Corp. | Cost: $7 Billion

After a 66-month marathon of formal applications, public hearings in multiple languages and official report writing, a conclusion is in sight for at least the regulatory approval stage of the Mackenzie Gas Project. Following the long-awaited release of the socio-economic joint review panel (JRP) findings in the last hours of 2009, the National Energy Board (NEB) pledged to set a brisk pace by handing down a final ruling on the latest reincarnation of the 40-year-old northern energy megaproject in September.

The natural gas megaproject got a reminder of its notorious vulnerability to being frozen in its tracks by the complex northern political, economic and environmental scene soon after the NEB set its schedule. Dehcho First Nations, who straddle the southern 40 per cent of the proposed 1,220-kilometer Mackenzie Valley Pipeline’s route from the Beaufort Sea coastline to northern Alberta, demanded a halt to the regulatory case’s final argument stage until the federal and Northwest Territories governments make known their responses to 176 recommendations by the JRP. The NEB rejected the demand but critics of the project dug in for further resistance.

While the noisy regulatory wrangling struggles towards a conclusion, the project’s sponsors and federal officials are quietly preparing for the last policy stage before the final economic decision on whether to start construction. Highly confidential negotiations on taxes, royalties and potential financial support will get underway in earnest when the industry can calculate costs or savings generated by multiple conditions that the NEB is expected to tack onto its approval. Realistic promoters of the project are allowing for up to two years of talks on fiscal terms even in their most optimistic completion date forecasts.

Location: Northwest Territories, Alberta | Sponsors: Imperial Oil Ltd., Shell Canada, Conocophillips Canada, Exxonmobil Canada, Aboriginal Pipeline Group | Cost: $16.2 Billion

The freshly completed Alberta Clipper Project has been built to handle up to 800,000 barrels daily as reviving development in the northern bitumen belt increases

New oil sands exports of about 450,000 barrels a day are scheduled to start flowing to the United States this spring via the freshly completed Alberta Clipper Project. The new pipeline facilities have been built to handle up to 800,000 barrels daily as reviving development in the northern bitumen belt increases the industry’s need for deliveries.

Anticipated growth in both production and consumption led to the 1,600 kilometers of additions to Enbridge Inc.’s 60-year-old pipeline network in Canada and the U.S. To top up the export line and handle growing output, new storage tanks and short pipelines will also be built for in-situ bitumen underground extraction projects in the Christina Lake area south of Fort McMurray. Winter project announcements by ConocoPhillips Canada, Total E&P Production Ltd., Husky Energy Inc., BP, Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., North West Upgrading Inc. and Cenovus Energy Inc. confirmed that the 2008-09 global credit and energy price slump only slowed down and did not stop oil sands development. Alberta Clipper will put more production on markets and trading hubs in the U.S. Midwest, where other recently completed facilities have opened new export routes all the way to giant refinery complexes on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

Location: Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Wisconsin | Sponsors: Enbridge Inc. | Cost: $3.5 Billion