Enbridge says that the 1,070 kilometres of its Line 3 Replacement Project in Canada will go into service by the end of this year.
In a statement on Friday, the company described the project as “a monumental undertaking…by any stretch of the imagination.”
It’s the culmination of four seasons of field construction between Hardisty, Alberta and Gretna, Manitoba, with nearly 50,000 welds and a peak workforce of 5,300, the company said.
The replacement project is designed to improve safety and increase throughput on Line 3, which was built in the 1960s and is increasingly subject to corrosion and cracking, running at only about half its original capacity for safety reasons.
The full Line 3 Replacement Project includes 13 miles in North Dakota, 337 miles in Minnesota, and 14 miles in Wisconsin. The Wisconsin portion has been operating since May 2018.
Ongoing permitting issues in Minnesota have delayed completion by at least one year, to the second half of 2020.
Analysts with GMP FirstEnergy continue to use a start date of January 1, 2021 in their modelling for the full project, according to a research note this morning.
To start up the Canadian portion of the project, Enbridge said it has reached a “major milestone” commercial agreement with shippers.
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