Where There's A Will, There's A Way -- September 29, 2019

Link here.

I can already hear the heads exploding in British Columbia.

Bit by bit by bit by rail.

From the linked article:

A test shipment of bitumen oil from Alberta is on its way to China, but it didn’t get to a British Columbia port by pipeline – it was moved by train through Prince Rupert in a semi-solid form commonly known as neatbit.

Melius Energy in Calgary is not the first company to propose moving bitumen through BC in a semi-solid form by train, but it appears to be the first to actually land a potential customer in China and start shipping semi-solid bitumen by train.

It has sent its first container, containing 130 barrels of bitumen, to China in a test shipment, and is currently building a new demonstration plant in Edmonton that turns diluted bitumen into a solid called TrueCrude.

Using existing rail infrastructure, Melius says it could potentially move 120,000 barrels per day of pure bitumen in 100-unit trains through the Port of Prince Rupert.

Here or elsewhere they refer to this as neatbit. I thought it was "railbit" but perhaps neatbit is somewhat different. And don't confuse dilbit with Dilbert. One is a cartoon character.

Neatbit, dilbit, railbit, a dollar,
All for Alberta, stand up and holler.

"Do I  hear an amen?"

Back on April 21, 2014, re-posting:

RBN Energy: how killing the Keystone XL is killing the small Canadian operators; this could work out well for the large operators; railbit vs dilbit.

Two weeks ago we noted that a unit train of railbit moved from Alberta’s oil sands region to an unloading facility at Natchez, MS. We learned subsequently that the unit train concerned carried dilbit crude (bitumen typically blended with 30 percent diluent) not railbit (bitumen blended with 17-20 percent diluent). Turns out we made some assumptions about the capability to load unit trains with railbit that ran counter to existing constraints that appear to make such a shipment impractical at present. In today’s blog we clarify these constraints and in the process shed light on the challenges faced by smaller oil sands producers trying to get their bitumen crude to market.

 And now, for a something a bit (no pun intended) different:

Angels In Heaven, Chris Rodrigues & the Spoon Lady