Vancouver (Platts)--24Jan2013/514 pm EST/2214 GMT

TransCanada expects to decide within the next few months whether to hold an open season to test shipper support for crude pipelines to the North American Atlantic Coast to compete with 1.5 million-2.0 million b/d of imported crude, CEO Russ Girling said Thursday.

Engineering work to convert one of six pipelines in TransCanada's underutilized natural gas system is completed and discussions are now taking place with key producers to determine whether extensions of that line to the Canadian and US Atlantic coasts have the necessary commercial underpinning, Girling told a CIB World Markets conference in Whistler, British Columbia.

"If the marketplace wants it, we're ready to step off the curb" and hold an open season, Girling said in a webcast presentation.

The prospect of building those pipelines is pinned on "probably five big players," who are likely to sign up if they see a chance to reduce the current price differential between heavy and light crudes, he said.

The Atlantic seaboard is the "logical market" for increasing production from Western Canada and the Bakken, but TransCanada's current priority is to make a compelling case for the economics, Girling said.

Increasingly confident that the Keystone XL project will get final approval from the Obama administration, he said TransCanada, having signed contracts for 100% of capacity on the Keystone system, is already working on opportunities for incremental pipeline connections from the Alberta oil sands and Bakken formation.

Girling said Keystone XL now has "two pieces of paper" suggesting it is on the path to construction: a final environmental impact statement by the US State Department and approval from Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman for a revised pipeline route to avoid the Ogallala Aquifer. Heineman approved the revised route Tuesday.

The "rhetoric" from non-governmental organizations about the impact of the oil sands on the environment ignores the facts, he said.

"Whether the oil comes from Venezuela or Alberta, the greenhouse gas impact is negligible," Girling said. "We could shut [Keystone XL] down and have no impact on greenhouse gas emissions. I believe at the end of the day that the regulatory process has to be an adjudicated decision based on the facts, not rhetoric," he said.

--Gary Park, newsdesk@pplatts.com --Edited by Richard Rubin, richard_rubin@platts.com