Page 7 - NorthAmOil Week 27
P. 7
NorthAmOil PIPELINES & TRANSPORT NorthAmOil
Enbridge eases Mainline volume requirements
NORTH AMERICA
PIPELINE operator Enbridge has lowered the volume commitments it will require for shipping on its Mainline pipeline system. e company will now require shippers to commit to mini- mum volumes of 2,200 barrels per day (bpd), which marks an almost 60% cut from the pre- vious required commitment of 6,000 bpd. e commitments are still required for a period of 8-20 years, unchanged from the previous terms for use of the Mainline. e change in volume requirements was confirmed by Enbridge to Reuters.
The move comes after smaller producers were initially concerned that they would be excluded from Enbridge’s minimum volume requirements. And Reuters noted that Enbridge is planning to turn the Mainline from a common carrier system that is open to all shippers to one that is mostly contracted for up to 20 years.
The Mainline is North America’s largest oil-shipping network.
Enbridge is planning to launch an open season for capacity on its Mainline in July. e change in capacity requirements, which is sub- ject to approval by the Canadian National Energy
Board (NEB), would take e ect in 2021.
e Enbridge Mainline, which originates in Edmonton, Alberta, is Canada’s largest crude pipeline system. It crosses the border between Canada and the US in Manitoba, where it joins Enbridge’s Lakehead system. e system also carries re ned petroleum products to Saskatch- ewan and Manitoba and natural gas liquids
(NGLs) to Sarnia, Ontario.
Enbridge’s move to change the minimum
require commitments on the system comes a er the pipeline has been expanded and upgraded in recent decades to reach its current capacity of 2.85mn bpd.
But while the move seems to be geared towards alleviating the fears of smaller pro- ducers, it has not been received entirely favourably. On July 10, Baytex Energy was reported by Reuters as saying it was “very concerned” about Enbridge’s plans to contract Mainline capacity.
“We do not like the current [nomination] sys- tem,” Baytex’s CEO, Ed LaFehr, said. “Whatever ends up around Enbridge contracting that space needs to be fair to conventional producers.
PERFORMANCE
Gulf of Mexico platforms evacuated as storm approaches
GULF OF MEXICO
OIL and gas producers began evacuating their workers from platforms in the US Gulf of Mex- ico this week as a weather disturbance in the area developed into Tropical Storm Barry.
Barry is the second named storm of the 2019 Atlantic hurricane season, and was located about 95 miles (150km) south-southeast of the mouth of the Mississippi River on the morning of July 11, with maximum sustained winds of 40 miles (65 km) per hour, according to the US National Hurricane Center.
Prior to Barry forming into a tropical storm, a number of oil producers in the Gulf said they were evacuating workers from their offshore platforms. ese included ExxonMobil, which said it had removed non-essential staff from three Gulf platforms and was prepared to evacu- ate its remaining workers in the region as neces- sary. e super-major said it expected the storm to have little e ect on its Gulf production.
Fellow super-majors BP, Royal Dutch Shell and Chevron were also evacuating many of their offshore workers and shutting output as the storm strengthened.
Chevron said it was evacuating and shutting
in output at ve of its platforms – Big Foot, Blind Faith, Genesis, Petronius and Tahiti. e com- pany said on July 9 that its Jack St Malo plat- form would continue operating normally while non-essential personnel were evacuated.
Shell said it was evacuating non-essential workers from its four platforms in the eastern Gulf – Appomattox, Mars, Olympus and Ursa.
Meanwhile, BP removed sta from the Na Kika platform – in which Shell owns a stake – though it had been largely shut down already for maintenance work.
Independents including Anadarko Petro- leum and Australia’s BHP followed suit in removing non-essential sta from the eastern Gulf.
e US Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) said Gulf operators had shut 602,715 bpd of production in ahead of the storm as of July 10. is equates to about 32% of the total oil production in the Gulf. Around 496mn cubic feet (14mn cubic metres) per day of natural gas output, or 18% on average, had also been shut in. e potential for more disruptions to production remains.
Week 27 11•July•2019 w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m P7
