GenScape comments on potential to rekindle Freedom pipeline

In a blog piece yesterday, GenScape comments on the potential to reboot the Texas to California pipeline.

After a year and a half of laying on the scrap pile, Kinder Morgan’s unique Texas to California Freedom Pipeline project is back on the table with modifications that the company hopes will attract shippers, a company official said this week.

The 250 000 bpd pipeline proposal was tabled in mid-2013 after it failed to receive enough interest from shippers, who said they wanted to move barrels via rail into the Golden State, rather than signing long-term pipeline commitments.

But many of those West Coast industry players have faced crude-by-rail permitting delays amid increasing environmental impact scrutiny, and now the revamped pipeline plan for Freedom is looking a whole lot sweeter, Tom Dobson, Project Director of Kinder Morgan Pipelines, said during a presentation on Wednesday at Infocast’s Moving Crude Supplies to the West Coast End Markets conference in Los Angeles.

The project always included the conversion of an underutilised gas pipeline to pipe crude production from the prolific Permian Basin to Southern California. But now plans also include the construction of an atmospheric topping unit in West Texas in order to make and ship blends that mimic Alaskan North Slope crude, a California refinery crude slate mainstay.

The first time around, Kinder Morgan misjudged the fact that Permian Basin crudes are getting lighter and are not a perfect fit for refiners in California, who have a heavier diet, Dobson explained.

The topping unit would be capable of processing 150 000 bpd and able to produce two cuts - condensate and gas oils/residual fuels for blending with additional crude, Dobson said. The condensate could be exported to Asia from third-party docks along the California Coast and the Freedom Pipeline would batch separate shipments – 100 000 bpd of condensate for export and 200 000 bpd of blended crude with about a 31 degree API for California consumption, he said.

The project’s resuscitation hasn’t yet been announced publicly, Dobson said on the sidelines of the conference, but the company is once again in talks with shippers and hopes to attract a JV partner for the project. He said that it could take 40 - 48 months to bring the pipeline into service.

See the blog post here.

Edited from source by Elizabeth Corner

Read the article online at: https://www.worldpipelines.com/project-news/05122014/genscape-comments-on-potential-to-rekindle-freedom-pipeline/