- Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion Opens New Export Routes
- Rare Oil Shipment from Canada to Alaska Highlights Unique Trade
- Alaska’s Nikiski Port Receives Uncommon International Crude Deliveries
The first shipment of crude from Canada to Alaska in at least a decade has arrived. According to a cargo-tracking service, a tanker carrying 466,000 barrels of oil left Vancouver on October 1, and arrived 10 days later in Nikiski, Alaska. According to Vortexa’s tanker-tracking service, that shipment to the Marathon Kenai refinery is the first such delivery recorded by data kept by U.S. Customs since 2014, reports BNN Bloomberg.
Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion Boosts Export Potential
This marks the first shipment in nearly four years since the newly expanded Trans Mountain pipeline carrying crude from Canada’s oil sands opened up export opportunities that now include increased shipments to refineries along the U.S. West Coast and markets in Asia. The increased capacity of the expanded pipeline will carry close to 900,000 barrels per day. In the past several months, tankers have sailed off from Vancouver towards countries like China, South Korea, Brunei, and India.
Unique Shipment to Alaska
Most crude oil that comes from Vancouver is shipped to refineries either in California or Washington State. This one, however, had a special quality about it, what with it being one of the U.S.’s major oil-producing states. Alaska rarely imports crude; fewer still import crude from outside of North America.
The shipment highlights shifts in trade brought on by the expanded pipeline. It indicates the prospects for Canadian crude into new markets continue to increase.
Rare International Deliveries to Nikiski
Nikiski, where the Canadian crude was delivered, is very rarely a receiver of international inbound shipments of crude. According to records, since 2018, only five such shipments have been recorded in Nikiski. Two of these shipments were received in 2022 from Argentina, and two in 2021 from Russia. So, the recent shipment of Canadian crude to Alaska goes on this rare list of international oil trade activity seen in North America.
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Source: BNN Bloomberg
