Canada’s Trans Mountain Corp has begun filling its pipeline expansion with oil in a staged process, a senior executive said on Wednesday, as construction of the long-delayed progress nears an end.
The pipeline expansion faces technical challenges in the next two weeks as it finishes work on the last segment in British Columbia, Chief Financial Officer Mark Maki told Reuters.
“We feel good about progress,” Maki said on the sidelines of the annual CERAWeek energy conference in Houston. “We’ve got some key technical things that are coming up here in the coming week or two. And once those are done, I think it should be relatively smooth sailing.”
The Canadian government-owned C$34-billion ($25 billion)pipeline expansion will nearly triple the flow of crude from Alberta to Canada’s Pacific Coast to 890,000 barrels per day, but has been plagued by years of delays, construction problems and cost overruns.
The pipeline is expected to raise Canadian crude prices just as oil sands producers steadily boost production.
One of the technical challenges involves stringing pipeline through hard rock in the final segment, Maki said. Trans Mountain received approval from the Canada Energy Regulator to use smaller-diameter pipe on that segment.
(Reporting by Arathy Somasekhar in Houston and Rod Nickel in Winnipeg, Manitoba; editing by David Evans)