The Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion will be complete by the end of May, with the first waterborne exports from the expanded system starting a month later, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says.
Smith made the comments in an interview on Tuesday during a visit to the CERAWeek 2024 energy conference in Houston.
The $30.9-billion expansion will add 590,000 barrels per day to the pipeline, tripling capacity on the line that ships crude oil and products from Edmonton to a shipping terminal in Burnaby, B.C., on Canada’s Pacific coast.
The Trans Mountain pipeline is owned by the federal government, which purchased it in 2018 in an effort to complete the expansion project after it was scuttled by previous owner Kinder Morgan Canada.
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It is the only pipeline to Canada’s West Coast, and the expansion will increase its capacity to 890,000 barrels per day from 300,000, but the project has hit a series of technical snags and delays during construction.
Construction has been underway for more than three years.
Smith’s office told Global News it is her understanding “the call to fill has gone out and it will be completed by the end of May and that means the first ship could be on the water in June, which is very exciting for everybody.”
When contacted by Global News, the company in charge of the pipeline responded with a statement saying “Trans Mountain continues to work toward an anticipated in-service date in the second quarter of 2024.”
— with files from Reuters.
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