While the industry keeps on waiting for new oil sands pipelines to get approved, a vice-president at CN says the railway is the perfect stop-gap measure.
James Cairns is the VP of Petroleum and Chemicals at CN Rail and spoke to the Chamber of Commerce yesterday.
“We don’t view ourselves as competing with pipelines we view ourselves as supplementing the existing pipeline network.”
He adds, ” it’s been proven over the last 2 years that both railway and pipelines are a key part of the supply chain to get crude oils to markets”
He says it’s cheaper too.
“If you have the ability to ship a very heavy product, a bitumen product by rail, rail will be cheaper than a pipeline solution, simply because you do not require a diluent to ship rail to market.”
Cairns says, 30% of what goes through a pipeline is diluent, but 100% of what’s on a train is bitumen.
He says looking forwards, the company plans to double up some of it’s rail lines for more capacity, and the insulated rail cars help the job go faster.
“The reality is were doing it today and were doing it at a very successful pace and were seeing a significant commitment by many of the oil producers, many of the refiners to pick that rail solution to get at some of these Alberta barrels.”
June 28th, 2013
