Trans-Panama Pipeline - History

History

The Trans-Panama Pipeline was opened in 1982 as an alternative to carry crude oil from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean. In 1980s in average twenty supertankers, each with a capacity of a million barrels of crude oil, arrived each month at Puerto Armuelles from Valdez in Alaska, for transportation to the Caribbean Sea. Between 1982 and 1996 the pipeline transported 2.7 billion barrels of Alaskan oil to the U.S. Gulf Coast ports. After declining Alaskan oil shipments, the pipeline was closed in 1996. In November 2003, the Trans-Panama pipeline was re-opened for transportation of Ecuadorian crude oil to U.S. Gulf ports.

In 2005, Venezuela began talks about reverse using the pipeline for its oil exports to China. In May 2008, BP signed an agreement with Petroterminal de Panama S.A., according to which the pipeline was modernized and reversed to ship BP's Angolan and other crude oil to the U.S. West Coast refineries. BP acquired 5 million barrels (790×10^3 m3) of storage capacities and committed to secure shipments of 65 thousand barrels per day (10.3×10^3 m3/d). On 28 August 2009, Tesoro oil company started reverse oil shipments through the pipeline to supply the Atlantic Basin oil to the Pacific Rim refineries.

On 15 October 2009, Petroterminal de Panama S.A. signed a contract with Chicago Bridge & Iron Company to design and contsruct the second-phase expansion of terminal storage facilities.

Read more about this topic:  Trans-Panama Pipeline

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    He wrote in prison, not a History of the World, like Raleigh, but an American book which I think will live longer than that. I do not know of such words, uttered under such circumstances, and so copiously withal, in Roman or English or any history.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    English history is all about men liking their fathers, and American history is all about men hating their fathers and trying to burn down everything they ever did.
    Malcolm Bradbury (b. 1932)

    It gives me the greatest pleasure to say, as I do from the bottom of my heart, that never in the history of the country, in any crisis and under any conditions, have our Jewish fellow citizens failed to live up to the highest standards of citizenship and patriotism.
    William Howard Taft (1857–1930)