After years of planning, it’s finally official. Kinder Morgan has filed an application with the National Energy Board for approval of a $5.4 billion pipeline expansion project that would come directly through Burnaby.
According to Ian Anderson, president of Kinder Morgan Canada, the company has been consulting with various stakeholder along the pipeline route for the past 18 months.
“Our engagement efforts will continue beyond this filing leading up to the NEB hearing as we consider further input that is critical to our planning on this project,” he said in a media release.
Kinder Morgan filed the NEB application today, and the government has to respond with a decision within 15 months. The application is more than 15,000 pages long, which translates to a seven-foot stack of paper contained in 37 binders.
The facilities application includes a proposed route for Burnaby, but the company is still looking at alternative routes. The final decision on the pipeline’s path is expected in late 2015.
Kinder Morgan wants to expand the Trans Mountain pipeline, which has been running Alberta oil to the West Coast since the 1950s. While Enbridge has also proposed to build a pipeline through B.C., the Trans Mountain is the only option currently available for shippers bringing oil out of Alberta’s tar sands.
Kinder Morgan wants to twin the line, increasing capacity from 300,000 barrels of oil per day to 890,000 – nearly tripling current volume. The pipeline’s terminus is in Burnaby, and Kinder Morgan also operates a tank storage facility on Burnaby Mountain and the Westridge Marine Terminal on the Burrard Inlet, where tankers fill up with crude.
To read the full application, go to application.transmountain.com.
