Canadian energy company eyes rail for oil

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CALGARY, Alberta, Sept. 19 (UPI) -- Canadian energy company Gibson announced plans to transport crude oil from Alberta to North American markets as part of an expansion project.

Gibson Energy said it signed a letter of intent to deliver crude oil using Canadian Pacific's North Main Line for deliveries of crude oil to markets across North America.

In early September, U.S. freight carrier BNSF Railway, which operates 32,000 route miles of rail in the United States and Canada, said it was backing a rail expansion in North Dakota and Montana to allow the transport of 1 million barrels of crude oil per day from the region.

Statoil, a Norwegian oil company, said it had plans to use rail, not pipeline, to move oil from North Dakota.

Gibson added it was in the early stages of preparing its terminal near Hardisty, Alberta, for the construction of two storage tanks that can each hold as much as 400,000 barrels of oil.

"We expect continued growth at our Hardisty Terminal as oil sands and conventional oil production continue to develop at an accelerated pace," Rick Wise, a senior vice president at Gibson, said in a statement.

The tanks will connect to third-party oil export pipelines from Hardisty. Storage tank commissioning is expected by 2014.