Houston Lateral Project

The Gulf Coast Project is an approximate 485-mile (780-kilometre), 36-inch crude oil pipeline beginning in Cushing, Oklahoma, and extending south to Nederland, Texas, to serve the Gulf Coast marketplace. The 47-mile (76-kilometre) Houston Lateral Project is an additional project under development to transport oil to refineries in the Houston, Texas marketplace.

Upon completion, the Gulf Coast Project and the Houston Lateral Project will become an integrated component of the Keystone Pipeline System. This is a critical infrastructure project for energy security in the United States and the American economy. U.S. crude oil production has been growing significantly in states such as Oklahoma, Texas, North Dakota and Montana to the extent that producers do not have access to enough pipeline capacity to move this production to markets. The Gulf Coast Project will address this need by connecting crude oil storage facilities at Cushing, Oklahoma with the U.S. Gulf Coast. This will increase refineries’ access to domestic oil.

The proposed facilities would double the U.S. Gulf Coast refining market capacity directly accessible from the Keystone Pipeline System to over four million barrels per day by providing access to the key refining market in the Houston area. Associated facilities include the necessary receipt, delivery, pipeline, pumping, monitoring, control and ancillary facilities required to increase capacity.

Current plans are for construction activities to begin in the first quarter of 2013 and commercial operation of the Houston Lateral to commence in the first quarter of 2014.

The proposed route of the Houston Lateral, which will involve building a pipeline through the counties of Liberty, Chambers and Harris to Houston’s refining center, has been selected to minimize impacts to the land, environment and landowners. Route selection involves balancing different factors such as length; sensitive environmental features (rivers, wetlands, endangered and protected species), construction issues, paralleling existing infrastructure such as roads and other pipelines and considering stakeholder concerns. The final route will take into consideration detailed fieldwork and environmental surveys. The surveys may include engineering, environmental and archaeological surveys and are all part of a preliminary assessment process and a vital part of the project.