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(Reuters) – Canada’s Trans Mountain oil pipeline will be nearly entirely full for the month of April, a milestone that marks a utilization record for the conduit since its C$34 billion expansion was completed last year.
The 890,000-barrel-per-day pipeline, which carries oil from the province of Alberta to British Columbia’s west coast, is running near maximum capacity, said Trans Mountain CEO Mark Maki. Disruptions to Middle East supply due to the Iran war have increased demand for Canadian oil from buyers in Asia, especially China, Maki said. “We will be very, very close to full here shortly now,” Maki said in an interview in Houston at the CERAWeek by S&P Global conference, saying utilization was in “high-90s” in terms of percentage. “I would attribute that to disruption around the globe that the system is now running close to full.” As recently as last summer, the Trans Mountain system, which is owned by the Canadian government, was only about 84% full. Trans Mountain’s own forecasts showed the pipeline would not reach capacity until 2027-28, as use of the newly expanded system was increasing slower than expected.
The pipeline company could revise its long-term capacity utilization forecast to reflect changing conditions, Maki said. That also includes increased output from Canada’s oil sands producers, which are expected to exceed last year’s crude production record of 5.3 million bpd in 2026.
Trans Mountain is currently planning several optimization projects, including the addition of drag-reducing agents and new pumping stations, which are expected to add 300,000 bpd of capacity to the system by the end of 2028. Alberta, Canada’s main oil-producing province, has also been exploring the feasibility of a new one-million-barrel-per-day crude oil pipeline to British Columbia’s northwest coast to increase exports to Asia, but no private-sector company has committed to such an effort yet.
Reporting by Amanda Stephenson in Houton
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