Oil Sands Transportation

The Oil Sands Transportation business is the largest oil sands gathering business in Canada - transporting in 2011 roughly 786,000 b/d of bitumen blend or approximately 35% of Canada’s oil sands production. Consisting of the Cold Lake, Corridor and Polaris pipeline systems, this business segment has nearly 2,500 km of pipeline and 3.8 million barrels of storage.

The Cold Lake pipeline system is the sole transporter of Cold Lake area bitumen production. It currently has the capacity to transport roughly 650,000 b/d of bitumen blend.  Inter Pipeline is currently adding pump stations to the west leg of the Cold Lake pipeline system, which will boost Cold Lake throughput capacity from 535,000 to 650,000 b/d by 2013.


The Cold Lake system services the pipeline transportation needs of the founding shippers; Cenovus, Canadian Natural Resources and Imperial Oil as well as Shell Canada Energy’s Orion project in the Cold Lake region. The producers’ heavy bitumen is blended with diluent which is transported by Inter Pipeline from the Strathcona region to the Cold Lake area. This blended product is then shipped by Cold Lake to the major crude oil terminalling hubs in Edmonton or Hardisty, Alberta.

The Corridor pipeline system provides bitumen transportation services between the Athabasca Oil Sands Project (AOSP) near Fort McMurray, Alberta and the oil processing and marketing hub near Edmonton, Alberta. In 2011 the Corridor system transported approximately 296,000 b/d of diluted bitumen. Owned by Shell Canada Energy, Chevron Canada and Marathon Oil Corporation, ASOP is a major mining and bitumen upgrading project based in Alberta.

In response to increased production, and at the request of the shippers, the Corridor pipeline has been expanded to 465,000 b/d. The key component of the expansion is the construction of  463 kilometres of 42” diluted bitumen pipeline and associated facilities between the Muskeg River mine and the Scotford upgrader. The existing 24” pipeline has been converted to diluent service in order to supply increased diluent requirements at the mine site and a new 20” products pipeline has been constructed from the Scotford upgrader to the Edmonton market hub. The expansion project was completed in 2011 at a cost of approximately $1.85 billion.


With the completion of the Corridor system expansion, the existing 12 inch pipeline between the Muskeg River mine and the Scotford upgrader has become available for alternative service. Redesignated as the Polaris pipeline system, the 12 inch pipeline is being developed as a stand-alone diluent transportation system serving the Athabasca oil sands region. The Polaris system is expected to go into service in late 2012, and has already secured two long-term contracts that will utilize 90,000 b/d or approximately 75% of its initial capacity.