Canada’s South Bow, Bridger plan new Wyoming-to-Cushing oil pipeline

South Bow and Bridger Pipeline have moved a new oil corridor closer to construction, linking an Alberta-to-border line with a planned U.S. segment that would run from Phillips County, Montana, to Guernsey, Wyoming, and on to Cushing, Oklahoma. The April 30 presidential permit for Bridger Pipeline Expansion LLC gave the project a regulatory foothold at the border, while Cushing’s role as the main delivery point for West Texas Intermediate futures and the nation’s largest oil storage hub gives the route unusual market weight.

South Bow’s Prairie Connector fact sheet says the system would carry crude from Hardisty, Alberta, to the Canada-U.S. border, then into downstream infrastructure serving Guernsey, Cushing and the U.S. Gulf Coast. On May 29, South Bow said the project’s open season had succeeded and that it had secured 20-year binding shipper commitments for firm transportation service. Those commitments totaled at least 400,000 barrels a day, or about 72 percent of the proposed initial 550,000-barrel-a-day capacity, a sign that producers are willing to lock in long-term space on a new export outlet.

The economics point to a bet that Canadian supply will keep growing, or at least remain difficult enough to move that new pipe still makes sense. South Bow says Prairie Connector could increase Canada’s crude export capacity to the United States by more than 12 percent. That would matter most for western Canadian producers looking for relief from bottlenecks, and for refiners and trading hubs that depend on predictable flows into the Midwest and Gulf Coast.

The plan also carries the baggage of old pipeline politics. The route would use about 150 kilometers of existing but idle pipe in Canada before connecting to Bridger’s U.S. segment, and Reuters-based reporting said the corridor was tied to the right-of-way of the cancelled Liberty pipeline, which had been intended to move Rockies and North Dakota Bakken crude to Cushing. Montana and federal regulators have already opened public review of the Bridger Pipeline Expansion project, which is described as a 36-inch line stretching roughly 645 to 647 miles and crossing private, state and federal lands.

South Bow has said its immediate priority is to engage landowners and communities along the proposed route, a reminder that permitting and access remain as important as commercial demand. The company is targeting a final investment decision in mid-2027, plans to restart work on the Canadian portion around the second quarter of 2027 and expects service around the fourth quarter of 2028. If those dates hold, the project would add a new southbound artery just as North American oil producers keep testing how much infrastructure the continent will need to move crude efficiently across borders.