Page 11 - NorthAmOil Week 35

NorthAmOil PIPELINES & TRANSPORT NorthAmOil

Polaris pipeline diluent leak

results in partial outage

ALBERTA CANADA’S Inter Pipeline has shut down a seg- monitoring in the area, along with containment
ment of the Polaris pipeline system, which car- and clean-up operations.
ries light oil such as condensate from Edmonton The Polaris outage caused heavy crude prices
to oil sands facilities in Alberta to be used as to rise on September 1, narrowing the discount
diluent in bitumen transportation. The partial for Western Canadian Select (WCS) compared
shut-down comes in response to a leak close to West Texas Intermediate (WTI). There have
to the Saprae Creek residential area within the also been warnings that depending on how long
Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo. the outage lasts, it could lead to a temporary
According to Inter Pipeline’s website, its leak slowdown in oil sands production and the trans-
detection systems found an anomaly along its pipe- portation of output from the region.
line systems east of the Fort McMurray Airport Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. (TPH) analysts
on August 29. The Polaris and Corridor systems said that a prolonged shutdown could potentially
were initially shut down, having been identified affect the supply of diluent for steam-driven oil
as the potential sources of the leak. Inter Pipeline sands projects operated by companies, including
said in an update that Corridor had been restarted Imperial Oil, Husky Energy, Cenovus Energy
on August 31, but that the segment of Polaris that and Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. (CNRL).
was ultimately identified as the source of the leak Indeed, Imperial said on September 2 that it
would remain offline until further notice. was “undertaking a controlled ramp down” at its
The cause of the leak has yet to be established. Kearl oil sands project as a result of the Polaris
According to the Alberta Energy Regulator outage. The company added that all output at
(AER), initial reports suggest that around 550 Kearl had ceased at this time, but that the facil-
barrels, or 90,000 litres, of light oil were released ities were ready to ramp up to full production
in the spill. No impacts to water bodies or wild- rates once Polaris was back in service.
life have been reported, but Inter Pipeline said Polaris carried 238,000 barrels per day (bpd)
it had established environmental and wildlife on average in 2019.™

Enbridge restores service on

offshore pipelines after storm

GULF OF MEXICO PIPELINE operator Enbridge said on September for a second time the following day owing to
2 that operations had resumed on two offshore unplanned maintenance at an onshore gas pro-
natural gas pipelines that serve production plat- cessing plant. Citing an Enbridge spokesman,
forms in the US Gulf of Mexico. The announce- Reuters reported on September 2 that the main-
ment comes as other industry players – across the tenance had been completed, allowing the force
upstream, midstream and downstream sectors majeure to be lifted.
– continue their efforts to resume normal oper- The US Bureau of Safety and Environmental
ations after Hurricane Laura passed through the Enforcement (BSEE), the offshore regulator, esti-
Gulf last week and made landfall in Louisiana. mated that roughly 84.3% of the Gulf’s oil pro-
Enbridge said that the Garden Banks pipe- duction, or 1.56mn barrels per day (bpd), had
line, which has a capacity of 1bn cubic feet been shut in by the middle of last week. Around
(28mn cubic metres) per day, had been restored 60.9% of the region’s gas output, or 1.65bn cubic
to service after being halted last week as a pre- feet (46.7 mcm) per day, had also been shut in at
caution ahead of Laura’s arrival. The pipeline that point.
serves four offshore production platforms – By September 1, as efforts to restore opera-
Auger, Baldpate, Enchilada and Magnolia. The tions continued, 525,099 bpd, or 28.4% of Gulf oil
company had moved to restart operations on the production, remained shut in, as well as 676.6mn
Garden Banks pipeline on August 31, but work- cubic feet (19.2 mcm), or 25.0% of its gas output.
ers discovered a communications problem that Oil and gas producers have returned crews to
delayed the pipeline’s return to service. 228 of 310 evacuated offshore facilities. Onshore
Meanwhile, Enbridge had returned the work to restart shut-in refining capacity is also
Nautilus pipeline to service on August 30, under way, but has been hampered by power
only to declare force majeure on the pipeline outages in the wake of the storm in some cases.™

Week 35 03•September•2020 www. NEWSBASE .com P11