The Oil Sands Transportation business is the largest oil sands gathering business in Canada - transporting roughly 600,000 b/d of bitumen blend or approximately 40% of Canada’s oil sands production. Consisting of the Cold Lake and Corridor pipeline systems, this business segment has over 1,900 km of pipeline and 2.4 million barrels of storage.
The Cold Lake pipeline system is the sole transporter of Cold Lake area bitumen production. It currently has the capacity to transport 460,000 b/d of bitumen blend and, with the addition of new pump stations on the south leg; it will have the capacity to transport 560,000 b/d by 2008. The system can be cost effectively expanded to 700,000 b/d.
The Cold Lake system services the pipeline transportation needs of the founding shippers; EnCana, Canadian Natural Resources and Imperial Oil as well as Shell Canada Energy’s Orion project in the Cold Lake region. The producers’ heavy bitumen is blended with diluent which is transported by Inter Pipeline from the Strathcona region to the Cold Lake area. This blended product is then shipped by Cold Lake to the major crude oil terminalling hubs in Edmonton or Hardisty, Alberta.
The Corridor pipeline system provides bitumen transportation services between the Athabasca Oil Sands Project (AOSP) near Fort McMurray, Alberta and the oil processing and marketing hub near Edmonton, Alberta. In 2007 the Corridor system transported approximately 110,400 b/d of diluted bitumen. Owned by Shell Canada Energy, Chevron Canada and Marathon Oil Corporation, ASOP is a major mining and bitumen upgrading project based in Alberta.
In response to increased production, and at the request of the shippers, the Corridor pipeline is in the process of being expanded from the current capacity of 300,000 b/d to 465,000 b/d. The key component of the expansion is the construction of approximately 470 kilometres of 42” diluted bitumen pipeline and associated facilities between the Muskeg River mine and the Scotford upgrader. The existing 24” pipeline will be converted to diluent service in order to supply increased diluent requirements at the mine site and a new 20” products pipeline will be constructed from the Scotford upgrader to the Edmonton market hub. The expansion project is expected to be completed in 2010 at a cost of approximately $1.8 billion.
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