OTTAWA: Flow of Canadian heavy crude to the U.S. Gulf Coast is sharply increasing. A combination of two pipelines is starting to do what the controversial Keystone XL oil-pipeline plan hasn’t been able to accomplish.
Enbridge Inc’s Illinois-to-Oklahoma Flanagan South line, coupled with Enterprise Products Partners’ Oklahoma-to-Texas Seaway Twin line, are delivering their first large-volume shipments to the biggest refinery market in the United States, most of which is built to handle viscous oil like that produced in Canada.
“We are connected all the way from Canada to Houston, Texas City, Beaumont and Port Arthur,” Jim Teague, chief operating officer of Enterprise, which operates the 850,000 bpd Seaway system, said Friday near the end of the line on the coast, where a new marine terminal can double as an export platform.
Unlike Keystone, the Flanagan South-Seaway Twin combination has been largely overlooked by environmental groups and has bypassed the need for U.S. federal approval as neither crosses the Canadian border. The existing Mainline system already feeds Flanagan South from Canada.
This week, the U.S. Senate advanced a bill to approve TransCanada Corp’s Keystone project as Republicans seek to secure enough votes to overcome a possible veto by President Barack Obama, who has been considering the project for six years. A rally for the project, led by Republican Senator John Cornryn, was held in Beaumont, Texas, on Friday.
Flows from 600,000-barrels per day Flanagan South and 450,000-bpd Seaway Twin began in December, after some delays. The Twin parallels the original 400,000 bpd Seaway line, which moves both heavy and light crude to the Gulf Coast from the U.S. crude futures hub in Cushing, Oklahoma.
The incoming Canadian could displace heavy imports from Venezuela, Mexico and even Saudi Arabia, threatening to further pressure crude prices, which have fallen by half since June on global oversupply.
