Hearings Open Examining Key Canadian Gas Line
Hearings before Canadian regulator the National Energy Board (NEB) examining TransCanada’s critical North Montney Mainline (NMML) variance proposal opened January 22 in Calgary, with many Alberta producers worried big volumes of BC gas will flood an already saturated Alberta gas market.
TransCanada wants the NEB to allow NMML – which was originally intended to feed BC gas to the now cancelled Pacific Northwest LNG project – to be developed to instead move 1.485bn ft3/day of gas from the North Montney field in BC to TransCanada’s Nova Gas Transmission Limited (NGTL) system in Alberta, which provides access to the beleaguered AECO gas trading hub and to export points serving markets in eastern Canada and the US.
The new volumes would not be marketed all at once, but would be phased in to the NMML facilities over four years, from 2019 through 2022.
Nearly half those volumes (about 700mn ft3/day) would come from Progress Energy, the Petronas subsidiary that was initially intended to supply Pacific Northwest LNG with most of its feedstock. The remaining 785mn ft3/day would come from 10 shippers who signed precedent agreements with TransCanada after the LNG project was cancelled.
Laurie Smith, counsel for Atco Gas, which is opposing TransCanada’s application, disputed whether the NGTL system, as it is currently envisioned over the 2019-2022 period, will have the capacity to take the NMML volumes into the Alberta market.
TransCanada says it will have capacity for the additional 1.485bn ft3/day, but Smith suggested that additional capacity is already contracted to shippers other than those supporting the NMML facilities.
“Contracts, which have yet to be signed, for 1.485bn ft3/day are not flowing yet, but those facilities in that area…they're fully contracted,” he said during cross examination of TransCanada vice president Patrick Keys and Simon Ritsch, the pipeline company’s director of system design. “So somebody has to be building incremental capacity in order to move those volumes away from British Columbia downstream of the Alberta-British Columbia Border.”
Both Ritsch and Keys insisted the capacity was or would be available to move an incremental 1.485bn ft3/day on the NGTL system.
“To be perfectly clear, the NGTL system, as presently designed, can accommodate the 1.485bn ft3/day,” Keys said, adding no additional facilities would be required for the NMML volumes, although new looping would be needed to accommodate 400mn ft3/day coming onto the NGTL system via TransCanada's nearby Saddle West Expansion Project.
The NEB hearings continue in Calgary until January 26 before reconvening January 30 in Dawson Creek, BC.