Bidirectional pipeline flow explained
The owners of a pipeline that supplies the region with gasoline tell federal regulators that it can deliver product from Midwestern refineries without disrupting the current flow from refineries in the Philadelphia area.
Buckeye Partners of Houston, Texas, explains how bidirectional service on the Laurel Pipeline would work in a response filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to a protest to its petition for approval to provide the service.
A group of gas station owners organized as “Deny Buckeye” is asking FERC to deny Buckeye’s petition, questioning how the service would work and that it would favor the Midwestern refineries. Members of the group include Gulf Oil, Sheetz, Giant Eagle and other fuel retailers.
Buckeye petitioned FERC for approval after a Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission administrative law judge recommended against approving its original proposal to reverse the flow of the pipeline to accommodate the Midwestern refineries only. The PUC followed the recommendation and denied the petition.
In its response to the FERC protest, Buckeye says it can physically deliver 40,000 barrels a day from the Midwest to a terminal in Eldorado near Altoona and maintain the current flow of 120,000 barrels a day from Philadelphia.
Reversing the flow in the pipeline to meet demands of Midwest and Eastern refineries takes about an hour and, Buckeye said, it provides bidirectional service in 10 other pipelines.
After receiving and reviewing requests for shipping product, Buckeye said it would check for capacity to determining whether shipping requests for equal volumes of the same products are being made to transport product to Eldorado and the terminal in Coraopolis.
“Virtual movements” would then be used to optimize pipeline operations. A virtual movement is the swapping of a volume of product from Eastern refineries to the accounts of Midwestern refineries and vice versa, according to Buckeye.
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