Parkland Corporation said on Thursday that its 55,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) Burnaby refinery is maintaining fuel supply to customers after floods in British Columbia shut the Trans Mountain pipeline and disrupted rail deliveries.
The 300,000 bpd Trans Mountain pipeline transports crude and refined products from Alberta to Burnaby. It was shut down as a precaution on Sunday as a phenomenon known as an “atmospheric river” dumped a month’s worth of rain on southern British Columbia in two days.
Roads and railways, which also deliver fuel to the region, were washed out, effectively cutting off the lower mainland from the rest of Canada. The region depends on Trans Mountain for more than 80% of its fuel.
A spokeswoman for Parkland, which also sells gasoline and diesel to motorists through a network of retail service stations, said broader supply chains for essential fuels are resilient, but added that the company has contingency plans in place if the shutdown drags on.
“We have maintained fuel supply to our customers and, depending on the duration of the shutdown, we have some optionality and contingencies to import fuel from the Pacific Northwest into the lower mainland,” Parkland spokeswoman Larissa Mark said.