Maine crude movements narrow gap with 2014

OREANDA-NEWS. October 09, 2015. Shipments on the Portland-Montreal crude pipeline from April to August were down only slightly compared with the year-prior period after a significant drop in the first three months of 2015, another indication of a resurgence in waterborne imports.

The imminent opening of the 300,000 b/d Enbridge Line 9, which will serve the same eastern Canadian markets at the Portland-Montreal line with onshore crude, could change that however.

According to Maine regulators, the pipeline system — majority-owned by ExxonMobil-controlled Imperial Oil — moved about 67,000 b/d from April through August, down by about 10,000 b/d from the prior-year period. In the first three months of this year, the pipeline moved about 86,000 b/d, or roughly 30,000 b/d less than in the corresponding period of 2014.

The line moved 89,300 b/d of imported crude into Quebec last year, down from 270,000 b/d in 2010, according to state figures. The closure of Shell's 130,000 b/d Montreal refinery in the fall of 2010, coupled with the surge of North American crude moving by rail and ship into the region, have further reduced calls on the World War II-era pipeline that accepts tanker-borne crude delivered at South Portland, Maine.

Now that Canadian regulators have given Enbridge the green light to start up Line 9, connecting Montreal's remaining refining capacity to North American crude by pipeline, the Portland-Montreal line is expected to come under further pressure. The company has left open the option of reversing the line for possible exports, but South Portland has enacted an ordinance effectively banning movement of heavy crude out of the terminal.

According to the state, no trains have moved crude through the state since February. Maine had been a popular crude-by-rail route on the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway (MMA) connecting the Bakken shale to Irving's Saint John, New Brunswick, refinery, but it went out of business last year in the aftermath of the 2013 Lac-Megantic, Quebec, crude train derailment that killed 47 people.

Central Maine and Quebec Railway, which bought MMA's assets, has not shipped any crude.