By OGJ editors
HOUSTON, Aug. 17 -- Portland Pipe Line Corp. and Montreal Pipe Line Ltd. launched an open season to assess interest in reversing an existing 18-in. pipeline to ship Canadian oil from Montreal to South Portland, Me.
The reversal project could begin moving as much as 128,000 b/d of western Canadian heavy crude by the second quarter of 2010. About 2 years later, Portland Pipe Line would accept both light synthetic and heavy grades of western Canadian crude in a two-stream operation and would allow delivery of 128,000-166,000 b/d.
Conditional offers are due by Sept. 10 and binding commitments by Sept. 30, 2008.
The South Portland marine loading operation is being designed to handle a minimum cargo size of 300,000 bbl. Tankers could deliver the crude to Canadian and US east coast and US gulf coast refineries.
Enbridge Pipeline's Trailbreaker project would complement PMPL's 18-in. pipeline reversal project by providing 200,000 b/d of incremental capacity into Montreal. Enbridge is developing Trailbreaker to be in service concurrently with the reversal project.
PMPL would continue to offer northbound service from South Portland to Montreal through its existing 24-in. pipeline.