Enbridge CEO sees soaring Canadian oil output exceeding pipeline capacity by 2026

financialpost.com:

CALGARY — Enbridge Inc. is bullish on the future of its Mainline pipeline system in light of projections that Canadian oil output could exceed the country’s pipeline export capacity as early as 2026.

Chief executive Greg Ebel told reporters following the company’s investor day in New York on Wednesday that Enbridge now believes Canadian oil production will grow by more than half a million barrels per day before 2030.

“It might be 500,000 in the next three to four years and then I could definitely see a couple hundred thousand barrels after that,” Ebel said.

“You know, as soon as people think there’s too much pipeline capacity, there’s more production being produced and more need for that production, so you need pipelines.”

It was not that long ago that industry watchers believed Enbridge’s Mainline network, which moves oil to markets in Eastern Canada and the United States Midwest, would take a hit when the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion opened and began offering oil companies access to new export markets off the West Coast.

But Ebel said that thesis is now a “stale concept.” The Trans Mountain expansion, which will increase the existing Trans Mountain pipeline’s capacity by 590,000 barrels per day to a total of 890,000 barrels per day, was supposed to take pressure off Canadian oil producers who for years have struggled with a shortage of export capacity.

But the expansion project has encountered numerous delays through the construction process. Its completion is now imminent and likely to occur sometime in the second quarter of this year.

“Remember TMX was supposed to come in before the end of the decade... and it is still not quite in service,” Ebel said, adding oil companies have been ramping up output in