TransCanada CEO on CNBC This Morning: Southern Leg This Year

Updates

March 8, 2012: Here's a link relating to the story below. Full of data points worthy of a comment, but it's beating a dead horse.

Original Post

TransCanada CEO said in an interview on CNBC about 10:50 a.m. EST, March 6, 2012, that the company will separate the north leg of the Keystone XL from the south leg. This was previously announced about a week ago.

The south leg is from Cushing, Oklahoma, to the gulf coast. Early in this interview, this throw-away line by the interviewer that was not addressed by the CEO nor was the question/comment re-made by the interviewer: this will narrow the delta between WTI and Brent. (I would have been interested in a) if that was likely; and, b) which way the delta would narrow.) Note: crude oil cannot be exported overseas from the Gulf but refined products can be.

The CEO said there were a "couple of permits" still needed for the southern leg. He was not concerned about the permits still needed, and continued to speak as if the permits were a done deal. His chutzpah concerns me, and probably resulted in the company misreading the American political environment when the XL was originally announced.

The CEO said that he expected work to begin early this summer (in about four months).

The interviewer asked whether there was enough oil to supply Enbridge's Seaway (the flow of which will be reversed this summer) and the Keystone 0.5XL South Leg: the CEO said that analysts project another 2 million bbls/day in the Cushing area (from the Permian and the Bakken) within the next few years, if I caught that correctly, more than enough to supply the two pipelines.