The Southern Lights Project contributes to a North American solution to energy reliability and security of liquid petroleum supply by transporting light hydrocarbons from the Chicago area to Alberta’s oil sands.
Enbridge’s Southern Lights Project is designed to bridge the gap between the available supply of light hydrocarbons (referred to as "diluents") from U.S. refineries and supply centers and increased demand for diluent by petroleum producers in the oil sands and heavy crude oil production regions in Western Canada. Diluents are light hydrocarbons that are used to dilute heavy crude oil and bitumen (a thick form of oil found in the oil sands) to a consistency that is thin enough to be transported by pipeline.
The pipeline will connect Canada's vast oil sands with key refinery markets in the U.S. Midwest, and it will require new pipeline and use of some segments of existing Enbridge pipeline that will be reversed for south-to-north diluent service. A separate diluent pipeline is proposed to be built from Edmonton, Alberta, to the heavy oil sands region in northern Alberta.
The project also includes the "LSr Project," a 313-mile, 20-inch crude oil pipeline from Cromer, Manitoba, to Clearbrook, Minn. It added needed capacity for light/sour crude (thus the "LSr" name) between Cromer and Clearbrook and additional capacity for Saskatchewan supply on this portion of the system. Construction was completed on the LSr Pipeline in October 2008, and it was brought into operation in February 2009.
Construction of the Alberta Clipper Pipeline from Hardisty, Alberta, to Superior, Wis., is mechanically complete and proceeding with line fill, which will take through the end of 2010 to complete. Because the two pipelines share the same right-of-way, final remediation of LSr will take place in 2010 when the Alberta Clipper project is finished. The entire clean-up can take place at the same time to reduce any environmental impacts as much as possible.
The LSr Project capacity will also be used when a parallel pipeline (known as Line 13) is later reversed to transport diluent north to Alberta. Access to a secure and more reliable supply of diluents from U.S refining centers will, in turn, facilitate increased production of growing supplies of crude oil for delivery to the United States from Canada.
