Canada’s newly expanded oil pipeline to the Pacific is opening new markets for the country’s crude in Asia while reducing flows off the US Gulf Coast, at least partly fulfilling the project’s promise of diversifying the industry’s customer base. 

Canadian oil producers have shipped about 28 million more barrels of crude off the country’s west coast since the expanded Trans Mountain pipeline began full operations in June than it did in the four months before that, according to data from Vortexa. Meanwhile, shipments off the US Gulf declined by 1.68 million barrels in that time.

The shift shows the government-owned Trans Mountain project is living up to its goal of reducing the Canadian oil industry’s reliance on US-bound pipelines and American refiners, which has resulted in deeper discounts for its crude and left it vulnerable to steep price shocks. Almost two-thirds of Canada’s new west coast shipments headed to China, India, South Korea and Brunei, with the remainder going to US buyers, largely along the Pacific.

More barrels “are going off the dock and going to Asian markets as expected,” said Ian Anderson, who led Trans Mountain as chief executive officer through its takeover by Canada’s government in 2018 before stepping down in 2022. “Asia was the market that was highly sought after.”

China has led the way, purchasing 8.24 million more barrels of Canadian crude since Trans Mountain started up. The figure includes 11.6 million more barrels shipped off Canada’s west coast, along with a reduction of 3.35 million barrels via the Gulf.

South Korea bought 3.91 million more barrels via Canada’s west coast, while India took 1.53 million more barrels. India also bought 1.23 million more barrels off the Gulf Coast.

The expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline nearly tripled the capacity of the system that stretches from Edmonton to a port near Vancouver to 890,000 barrels a day. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government purchased the pipeline from Kinder Morgan Inc. in 2018 to save the expansion, which had faced fierce opposition, from cancellation and open new markets for Canadian oil. 

While the project is fulfilling that purpose, some long-time buyers of Canadian crude are turning elsewhere. Spain, the fourth-largest foreign buyer of western Canadian oil in the past two years, cut its purchases of the country’s oil from the Gulf by about 352,000 barrels while adding none from the west coast. Spain had increasingly turned to Canadian crude in recent years amid uncertainty over supplies from Mexico and Venezuela, though it now has reasons to shift back toward those previous sources. 

Repsol SA, which accounts for essentially all of Spain’s imports of Canadian crude, obtained a license from the US in May to keep operating in Venezuela after sanctions were reimposed on the nation. Exports to Spain of Venezuelan crude, which is similar to Canadian heavy oil, subsequently doubled in August. 

  - Bloomberg