The pipelines going through Mn are maxed out right now. There has been several Star Tribune and Pioneer Press articles on the North Dakota oil boom since about 2008. In one article in the last year the state of North Dakota government doubled its estimate of the amount of oil that can be extracted and they said that there is 30+ years supply at the current rate of production. I don’t know if a pipeline company can justify their investment with a minumum 30 year use. If it only lasts 30 years I’m guessing they might figure out a better way of getting the tar sands oil through pipelines with a better and cheaper diluting fluid.
Since it is the pipeline companies that are proposing the lines from the Bakken, they would have figured out what return they needed.
Condensate (the lightest crude oil) which is used to dilute bitumen from the Canadian tar sands is very plentiful now, and they are proposing to reverse the flow direction of a border crossing condensate line from western Canada, back to Canada. But I agree that tar sand butimen is a good candidate for hauling in steam coil tank cars. If they used regular tank cars to haul railbit, they could back haul the dilutant.
What happened to the comments made by BNSF that they expected the north south transport of oil to mostly disappear in a few years as the new fields in west Texas come on line. Unfortunately I can’t find the article. It was part of a discussion about the Keystone P/L and it’s need.
WSJ reported today that a large Canadian refinery in New Brunswick has converted from Bakken by train to Brent by ship, which is now cheaper for their location on the East Coast.
With market forces both within and outside the petroleum industry - I don’t think ANYONE has any real handle on what will happen in 5 years. With what I am seeing, they can’t even forecast next week accurately.
Status of the 2 Bakken pipelines: The Enbridge Sandpiper has received their Certificate of Need from the Minn. PUC, and they alrady have easments from 94% of the landowners; Energy Transfer Partners, Dakota Acceess Pipeline will have the Iowa Utilities Board hearing in November. If Keystone is also built, it would be surplus for the Bakken. Enbridge’s eastern Canada project to bring Bakken all the way to the Alantic, is mearly reversing the flow direction again of the existing pipeline back to its original state.
The Dakota Access Pipeline is starting to bring in the pipe to the staging area, and expects to start construction after the first of the year, according to an article in today’s Trains NewsWire:
Can anyone offer some insight regarding pipeline capacity vs number of trainloads per day or week?
This new pipeline will have a capacity of 570,000 barrels per day, almost half the production of the Bakken Field. A tank car holds about 700 bbls, so this pipeline would equal over 800 tank cars per day