Regulator; Kinder Morgan Wins Battle With Vancouver Suburb

[Anonymous]

Hopefully, this will send a message to activist municipal, anti-luddite politicians, but I doubt it will. They should stick to maintaining roads and other urban infrastructure ALONE. Leave technical studies to the experts, so they can make a recommendation whether the twinning is in the national interest or not.

Canada's energy regulator ruled on Thursday that Kinder Morgan Energy Partners LP must be allowed access to a park in a Vancouver suburb in order to complete technical work for the planned $5.4 billion expansion of its Trans Mountain oil pipeline.



In its first order on record to a Canadian municipality, the National Energy Board said the City of Burnaby must allow the company to carry out surveys and studies at Burnaby Mountain, a  conservation site.



Burnaby sought to block the company's access to the site after city officials and crews hired by Kinder Morgan clashed last month over whether the company was allowed to cut down a handful of trees on the mountain to do survey work for the new route, work Kinder Morgan said the National Energy Board had approved.



Following a hearing earlier this month, the board agreed it could trump local by-laws and ordered the city to stand down.



"Surveys and studies about Trans Mountain's proposed pipeline route through Burnaby Mountain are required in order to make a recommendation to the federal government about whether or not this project should proceed," the board said in a release. "Preventing full access to Burnaby Mountain would be contrary to the purpose of the NEB Act."



The planned expansion of the line, which takes crude oil from Edmonton, Alberta, to Vancouver, will nearly triple its capacity to 890,000 barrels per day.

http://business.financialpost.com/2014/10/24/kinder-morgan-wins-battle-with-b-c-suburb/?__lsa=2b85-3d10">http://business.financialpost.com/2014/ ... =2b85-3d10">http://business.financialpost.com/2014/10/24/kinder-morgan-wins-battle-with-b-c-suburb/?__lsa=2b85-3d10

[Herman]

The damned pipeline is just about finished and it is facing delay after delay.

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/topstories/trans-mountain-warns-regulator-of-potential-catastrophic-two-year-pipeline-delay/ar-AA1lyH2d
CALGARY — The company building the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion is warning the project's completion could be delayed by two years if the Canada Energy Regulator does not allow a previously rejected request for a pipeline variance.

In a regulatory filing Thursday, Trans Mountain Corp. said such a delay would be "catastrophic" for the pipeline project, which is currently more than 97 per cent complete. It said a delay of that length would result in billions of dollars of losses for the company, which is a Crown corporation.

"These outcomes would not be in the public interest," the filing states.

The development is just the latest in a series of hurdles Trans Mountain Corp. has faced as it races against the clock to finish its massive pipeline construction project.

The Trans Mountain pipeline is Canada's only oil pipeline to the west coast, and its expansion will boost the pipeline's capacity to 890,000 barrels per day from 300,000 bpd currently.

The project's completion, which had been expected in early 2024, is eagerly awaited by this country's energy industry, which will benefit from improved access to export markets.

The pipeline expansion is also expected to reduce the Western Canada Select differential, which is a term for the discount Canadian oil companies typically take on their product in part due to lack of export capacity.

But the pipeline project has run into construction difficulties in its home stretch. Trans Mountain Corp. has already had to alter the route slightly near Kamloops, B.C. due to difficulty drilling a tunnel.

The newest challenges are related to hard rock conditions. In October, the Crown corporation asked the regulator to allow it to use a different diameter, wall thickness and coating for a 2.3 kilometre stretch of pipeline to make construction easier, but the regulator denied that request earlier this month.

Now, Trans Mountain says it has reason to believe that proceeding with the current construction plan through complex hard rock conditions could compromise a borehole and result in the failure of drilling equipment.

It is once again requesting that it be allowed to alter the type of pipe used, saying the risks of continuing are "more serious and acute than previously understood."

In an email Friday, Canada Energy Regulator spokeswoman Ruth Anne Beck said a decision-making process and timeline for Trans Mountain's latest request is still being determined.

Trans Mountain has asked the regulator to make a decision before Jan. 9 in order to prevent unnecessary delays.