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Providing coverage of Alaska and northern Canada's oil and gas industry
May 2013

Vol. 18, No. 21 Week of May 26, 2013

Peace overtures renewed

Alberta once again reaches out to British Columbia on unresolved pipeline issues

Gary Park

For Petroleum News

Alberta Premier Alison Redford made the first overture. “I know we can do more together,” she said.

Her Energy Minister Ken Hughes declared: “This is not a time for hard positions or difficult conversations. This is a time for all of us to reflect upon what we have in common ... and being open to how things evolve.”

Noble words that have Alberta’s oil sands producers and Canada’s energy pipeline companies holding their breath and crossing their fingers.

So far, the object of all these hopes, British Columbia’s newly elected Premier Christy Clark, is biding her time and she can afford to.

On the question of whether Enbridge and Kinder Morgan will be able to build pipelines from the oil sands to the British Columbia coast, Clark holds the sway.

Having overcome the pollsters and pundits and gained a strong mandate in British Columbia’s May 14 election, she has turned overnight from a political lightweight in her province to a heavyweight in Canada, especially when it comes to the energy export aspirations of the Canadian and Alberta governments.

In a self-assured post-election meeting with reporters Clark was transformed from glib into an assertive leader, focused on forging ahead with her economy-first campaign promise to create jobs and generate revenues.

LNG top of list

Top of that list is her grand dream of turning British Columbia into a global LNG force.

That means taking a measured approach to advancing plans for up to nine LNG export projects, including four by Shell, Chevron, BG Group and Petronas to ship as much as 47 million metric tons a year of LNG to Asia, and carefully negotiating her own plans to introduce a new LNG tax and royalty regime.

In an intensely competitive global environment, the risk facing Clark is that she could alienate investors.

Equally important to the investment image she portrays is how she handles Enbridge’s Northern Gateway project and Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain expansion which could ship a combined 1.4 million barrels per day of crude bitumen to tanker ports on the Pacific coast.

That’s where a thaw in a year of cool relationships between British Columbia and Alberta is needed.

Alberta moves for meetings

Redford, who had cause to be offended by Clark’s campaign statement that her province “does not need” Alberta to help develop British Columbia’s resources, took the first step in congratulating Clark on her election victory and setting the stage for an early meeting of the two leaders, possibly at a mid-June meeting of Western Canadian and territorial premiers.

Hughes called his British Columbia counterpart, Rich Coleman, and the pair also agreed to get in touch in the near future.

“As Canada moves to seize new opportunities and open new global markets, I look forward to renewing discussions with British Columbia about issues that affect our provinces,” Redford said.

“We need to work together on initiatives that will improve the quality of life for people living within our borders and ensure we’re doing everything we can to strengthen Canada for future generations.”

Clark adamant on pipelines

But Clark has yet to shift from her stance on pipelines.

If anything she’s been just as adamant as previously that none will be able to cross British Columbia from Alberta unless they meet the conditions she laid out for approval, which basically require: Successful completion of current environmental reviews; world leading marine and land oil spill response, prevention and recovery systems; opportunities for First nations to participate in and benefit from heavy oil projects; and a “fair share” of the fiscal and economic benefits of the projects.

Clark said the conditions are “not going to change,” noting that Kinder Morgan and Enbridge are both “working hard” to comply with standards.

She also again endorsed plan by newspaper publisher David Black to build a refinery at Kitimat to convert crude bitumen into products for shipment to Asia.

Clark said that would ease concerns over the prospect of tanker spills in the Pacific.

CAPP: conditions ‘not unreasonable’

The most encouraging response to Clark’s demands has come from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, whose leaders — despite being neutral on specific pipeline projects — have said Clark’s conditions are “pretty clear, not unreasonable, and (have) set the stage for discussions on how the projects can go forward.”

CAPP President David Collyer said sharing oil sands royalties is a “non-starter” unless it can be framed in the context of what benefits would accrue to British Columbia from pipeline development.

“We know what we are working with as far as the policy environment goes — it’s a government that has been largely supportive of oil and gas issues, like West Coast access for oil,” he said.

Even opponents of the Northern Gateway and Trans Mountain pipelines — notably Kennedy Stewart, a New Democratic Party member of the Canadian parliament from the Burnaby district in Metro Vancouver — said the defeat of provincial NDP leader Adrian Dix is a “big game changer ... and increases the odds of both pipelines going through.”

University of British Columbia political scientist George Hoberg, a specialist in resource management and a strong oil industry critic, called Clark’s victory a “major setback” for British Columbia’s environmental movement.

He issued an ominous warning that “an increasing number of environmentalists will choose to resort to civil disobedience when appropriate opportunities arise,” mirroring comments on social media that pipeline opponents may now have to take their fight “into the woods.”

First Nations issue

Janet Holder, Enbridge’s executive vice president assigned to Northern Gateway, acknowledged that her company must “work with aboriginals and the communities along the right of way and the citizens of British Columbia to help them understand the value of this project and to help us understand how we can address their concerns.”

A hint of what might lie ahead occurred May 16 when members of the Gitga’at Nation evicted a Northern Gateway crew from their territory on the north coast as it tried to conduct oil spill response surveys, claiming Enbridge has “screwed up” relations with First Nations.

Art Sterritt of Coastal First Nations said Enbridge would be “sadly mistaken” to feel any confidence in the election result.

“As far as we’re concerned (Northern Gateway) is still dead,” he said.

Sterritt described Clark’s pipeline conditions as “fairly onerous,” especially as they relate to fiscal and economic benefits, and doubts Enbridge will ever be able to meet them.

He said Coastal First Nations will tell Clark it can support environmentally sound LNG development, but is unable to endorse the volume of tanker traffic Northern Gateway would generate.

But Ivan Giesbrecht, Enbridge communications manager in Vancouver, said the voters of British Columbia have “spoken quite clearly that economic development and economic prosperity is a priority, but not at the expense of the environment. That has been our message all along.”

If and when Redford and Clark get down to serious negotiations, the British Columbia leader will arrive with tough fiscal demands and burdened by First Nations and environmental issues that could still outweigh the pure economic argument.





Trans Mountain expansion gets initial OK

Kinder Morgan Canada has cleared its first regulatory hurdle in pursuit of approval to expand its Trans Mountain pipeline system to 890,000 barrels per day of capacity from 300,000 bpd.

Canada’s National Energy Board ratified commercial aspects of the proposal, rejecting claims by Suncor Energy and Total E&P Canada that the company was trying to squeeze monopoly profits from the industry by raising the price of shipping crude to the Pacific coast.

Ian Anderson, president of Kinder Morgan’s Canadian operations, said in a prepared statement that his company now has the necessary economic certainty to go prepare a formal regulatory application for the C$5.4 billion project.

“We look forward to working with the new British Columbia government and will remain committed to listening to questions and concerns as we develop our application to file with the NEB later this year,” he said.

Suncor argued during hearings in February that Kinder Morgan’s U.S. parent was leveraging its position as owner of the only Pacific outlet for Canadian crude to earn an “excessive” return on equity.

Kinder Morgan said it needed a higher return in exchange for bearing risks of potential cost increases during construction and operation.

Rail, alternative pipelines

The federal regulator said existing pipeline constraints and deteriorating returns for oil sand producers gave Kinder Morgan an edge in negotiating contracts with potential shippers, but it stopped short of endorsing Suncor’s position.

“The fact that shippers are using rail and alternative pipelines suggests that, based on actual market behavior, these are alternatives to the Trans Mountain pipeline,” the NEB said, observing that Kinder Morgan “did not use market power to abuse a potential dominant position to negotiate tolls.”

The verdict allows the pipeline operator to submit a detailed facilities application to regulators, which would see Port Metro Vancouver be transformed into a major tanker terminal for Canadian crude — a prospect that is heatedly opposed by British Columbia’s New Democratic opposition party, municipal councils in the Greater Vancouver area, First Nations and environmentalists.

The International Energy Agency said in a new study that North America is destined to displace OPEC as the driver of global oil supply growth later this decade.

Pipelines projected after 2018

But it said pipelines to carry oil sands crude to the Pacific coast would not be built before 2018, beyond the targeted in-service dates set by Kinder Morgan and Enbridge.

Antoine Halff, head of the IEA’s oil industry and markets division, said that “given the capital requirements, the lead times in construction, the permitting process, large-scale pipeline development to the West Coast may be more likely beyond five years.”

Following a third open season in late 2012, Trans Mountain has received firm 15- and 20-year commitments from 13 shippers for 707,500 bpd, of which 588,000 bpd is directed to the Westridge dock in Port Metro Vancouver and 119,500 bpd to land destinations.

The remaining 20 percent or 180,000 bpd of would be reserved for uncommitted volumes.

Based on initial estimates, the indicated firm service toll for a 20-year contract for transporting less than 75,000 bpd from Edmonton to Westridge would be C$4.80 per barrel for heavy oil and C$4.73 for light oil.

—Gary Park


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