Quote:
Originally Posted by Bownesian
^^^
Deja vu.
Back to pipelines, I was thinking the other day about the export problem with the Refinery idea.
Energy East involved converting TCPL's natural gas line to the Ontario/Quebec border to take Dilbit. Is it technically feasible that the natural gas portion of the line instead be converted to accept refined products like the existing Trans Mountain line so that a hypothetical new Alberta refinery could send refined products (and synthetic crude as needed) east to Ontario to be distributed from there?
We'd then crack and refine the bitumen here, ship refined products to market (and synthetic crude to Ontario refineries that need it), ship petcoke by train where it's needed (probably west), and it might make the Alberta refining option more feasible.
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It's a neat idea, one drawback though is you would still have to compete with the local eastern refineries that are currently supplying them, and they have a massive advantage being so close. One benefit to the hypothetical refineries here would be the cheaper feedstock compared to the premium Brent that the eastern refineries import but I don't think it would be enough.