Colonial Pipeline cancels 2021 deadline for high sulfur reduction

Houston — Colonial Pipeline announced Tuesday that it canceled a July 1, 2021, deadline to no longer ship distillate fuels with more than 500 ppm sulfur content.

The looming deadline had significant implications for jet fuel, which has a sulfur cap at 3,000 ppm on Colonial, though barrels usually have around 1,000 ppm.

Colonial said in a notice to shippers that in addition to eliminating the 2021 deadline, it "has no current plans to change its current distillate sulfur specifications."

When it announced the deadline in May 2017, Colonial cited reduced demand for high sulfur fuel, operational issues with shipping those products, as well as difficulty in dealing with "high sulfur interface disposal."

The "interface" is the product mix between distillate grades on the pipeline, commonly mistaken for "transmix," which is the mix between distillates and gasoline.