Buried: Enbridge plans for the Trailbreaker pipeline
Enbridge ‘puts Traibreaker pipe on hold’
Canada's Enbridge has shelved plans for the C$346 million (US$277 million) Trailbreaker pipeline expansion that would have shipped western Canadian oil through Ontario and Quebec to markets in the US, a local newspaper reported.
The Calgary, Alberta-based company said the project, dubbed Trailbreaker, did not have the required support among oil companies, which would have had to commit firm volumes to the pipeline, according to Canada’s Globe & Mail newspaper.
The report cited an Enbridge spokeswoman as saying that given the economic climate, it decided to put the project on hold.
Enbridge outlined the interim scheme in July to give Canadian producers access to the Gulf Coast - the biggest US refining market - by using the pipeline expansion and then shipping the crude by tanker down the Atlantic seaboard.
Under the plan, Enbridge, operator of the main artery for Canadian crude shipments to the US Midwest, would have required two pipelines to reverse the direction in which the crude flows.
There has been a long list of proposals aimed at getting more crude derived from Canada's oil sands to refineries in Texas and Louisiana that have been hit with declining volumes of oil from Mexico and Venezuela, Reuters reported.