For the first time, a US pipeline company was able to transport biodiesel for commercial purposes. Plantation Pipe Line Company completed “the first transmarket and commercial shipment of 5% blended biodiesel (B5) on the pipeline’s mainline segment,” Kinder Morgan Energy Partners, L.P. (NYSE:KMP) announced last Tuesday (June 30).

B99 was injected by Plantation into ultralow sulfur diesel at the pump station and breakout tank farm at Collins, Mississippi. A 15,000-barrel batch of B5 was produced then shipped to the marketing terminals in Athens, Georgia and Roanoke, Virginia. Afterwards, Kinder Morgan tested samples from the batch and found the samples to have complied with specifications.

The company will also blend B5 to the markets of Birmingham and Oxford, Alabama; Bremen and Atlanta, Georgia; Belton and Spartanburg, South Carolina; and Charlotte and Greenboro, North Carolina.

Meanwhile, Kinder-Morgan is confident that it can ship blended biodiesel on Plantation’s Tennessee lateral. Shipping to the Tennessee lateral is expected to open doors for future shipments of blended biodiesel.

“We believe the blending and transportation of biodiesel by pipeline will have significant advantages for our customers when compared to the alternative of installing capital intensive blending facilities at individual marketing terminals. Kinder Morgan is responding to customers’ needs for blending and transporting biodiesel to meet federal regulatory requirements,” said KMP Products Pipeline President, Tom Bannigan.

“Kinder Morgan is initially focusing on moving blended biodiesel on segments of the Plantation system that transport only gasoline and diesel because of concerns about possible “trailback” of biodiesel into subsequent jet fuel batches. If we can work through these issues, we will evaluate the possibility of moving blended biodiesel to every market on the Plantation system,” Bannigan added.

Kinder Morgan Energy Partners, L.P. (NYSE: KMP) is a North-American pipeline transportation and energy storage company. It owns and operates over 26,000 miles of pipelines and 170 terminals, transporting natural gas, gasoline, crude oil, and other products. The company is valued at over $20 billion.

-  Jen Balboa

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Sources:

¹ http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=119776&p=irol-newsArticle&...
² http://media-2.web.britannica.com/eb-media/28/2728-004-38FF1550.gif