Canadian Railroads > Looking to learn how reciprocal switching works in Canada

On Friday, CN issued an embargo on LPG shipments in Sarnia, Ontario and in Alberta -- Ft. Saskatchewan, Scotford, South Beamer and Acheson.

I know that CP has a yard near the Fort Saskatchewan area. I believe that CN owns the tracks serving the petroleum, petrochemcial and gas plants in the area. 
But I thought that CP has some kind of access.

I'm looking to learn whether CP can get into the plants -- how it works and how it does not work? 

I believe in the Sarnia area -- a similar situation exists -- the host railroad is CN and CSX would be a carrier operating on reciprocal switching rights.

If I'm wrong please let me know. 

Thanks,

Clif

I must admit that this mystefies me.  Why the embargo?  Can someone explain this conundrum?
           Sid

Years ago 2000ish when I looked into it the serving road (i.e. CN in Sarnia) would switch the industry and the road within the switching district (i.e. CP or CSX) would pay the switching road an agreed fee that generally was much less than the division of a long-haul revenue split. Therefore if the serving road embargoed a station within switching limits another carrier could not serve the customer through reciprocal switching.
Andy

Posted from Android

Any new rules on switching haz-mat?

Posted from Android

CP and CN have access to the Shell Scotford and Air Liquide plants at Scotford Alberta, just outside of Fort Saskatchewan. The plants on the Beamer Spur are accessed by CN only, as is another LPG plant at Scotford. I'd like to know the reasoning behind the embargo, seems like odd timing considering winter is bassically here in Canada.

-Trevor

As far as I can tell -- the issue is related to an oversupply of butane. 

Keyera's Enviro Fuels plant went down on Nov. 1 and that was a big consumer of butane. 
In addition, Enbridge put its line 1 on allocation -- limiting shipments of products
Crude oil blenders are down on consumption and are selling butane back into the market.
butane and other NGL production is up in the Montney and Duvernay.

All that leads to an oversupply of butane. On top of that the loading racks in the Ft. Saskatchewan area are primarily devoted to loading propane and don't have the butane capacity.

The problem is on the supply side and limited takeaway capacity, They are practically giving field-grade butane away in Edmonton. Lots of people want to take away and the system is overwhelmed with inbound empties that can't be processed quickly enough.

Unfortunately, it appears that propane shipments are an unexpected casualty. I'm trying to figure out why there's an embargo in Sarnia. 

Clif
 

twropr Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Years ago 2000ish when I looked into it the
> serving road (i.e. CN in Sarnia) would switch the
> industry and the road within the switching
> district (i.e. CP or CSX) would pay the switching
> road an agreed fee that generally was much less
> than the division of a long-haul revenue split.

The tariffs for interswitching are set by the Canadian Transportation Agency (roughly the equivalent of the U.S. Surface Transportation Board).
https://otc-cta.gc.ca/eng/interswitching-rates


 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/07/18 03:02 by railsmith.