The Stanovan Marine Terminal is located on the south shore of Burrard Inlet in Burnaby, at the western end of the Trans Mountain Pipeline, about 7 miles (11 km) northwest of New Westminster and 5.3 miles (8.5 km) east of Vancouver, British Columbia. Crude oil from the pipeline is distributed to refineries in Parkland and Burnaby. The Parkland Corporation uses the Stanovan Terminal to export gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and asphalt produced at its refinery. The Westridge Marine Terminal, located farther east, exports products from other Burnaby refineries. The terminal occupies a wedge of Pleistocene glacial and glaciomarine sediments that overlie older alluvial and deltaic deposits of the Burrard Formation. These Eocene rocks were deposited in a subsiding forearc basin extending from Burrard Inlet south to Bellingham. Beneath them lie Late Cretaceous alluvial sediments of the Nanaimo Group, which are widely distributed around the Strait of Georgia and overlay granitic rocks of the Coast Mountains Batholith. During the Pleistocene epoch, glacier ice flowed south and southwest from the Coast Mountains, reshaping the region through erosion and sediment deposition. The glaciers removed much of the sedimentary fill of the Georgia Basin and deposited thick, unconsolidated sediments that now cover Paleogene rocks in the Fraser and Puget Lowlands. The Fraser Glaciation, lasting from about 30,000 to 11,000 years ago, marked the last major glacial advance. As the glaciers retreated, the Fraser River extended its delta westward into the Strait of Georgia. Initially, the relative sea level was about 660 feet (200 m) higher than today but fell rapidly due to post-glacial rebound. By around 8,000 years ago, it was approximately 40 feet (12 m) lower than at present. A marine incursion about 7,000 years ago led to the aggradation and current geomorphology of the Fraser River floodplain.

The lowlands of the Fraser River floodplain are the traditional territory of several Coast Salish–speaking First Nations. Numerous villages once lined the shores of Burrard Inlet, with the southern shore near the present-day refinery terminals primarily inhabited by the Tsleil-Waututh First Nation. Family lineage and kinship were central to tribal identity, determining where people could live, hunt, fish, and what knowledge and privileges they inherited. Early European explorers and fur traders introduced diseases that devastated Indigenous populations, prompting smaller communities to consolidate for protection. In the early 19th century, disease-related depopulation made Coast Salish peoples vulnerable to slave raids and internecine warfare by the Lekwiltok—now known as the Kwakwakaʼwakw—from Johnstone Strait on the east coast of Vancouver Island. The Fraser River gold rush in 1858 led to the creation of the Colony of British Columbia. The British claimed authority over the land and its Indigenous inhabitants. Royal Engineers and colonial officials soon arrived from England and established New Westminster as the capital. Settlers were encouraged to claim land through pre-emption, which allowed individuals to acquire property after clearing land and building homes. In the 1880s, the Canadian Pacific Railway was extended from Port Moody at the head of Burrard Inlet to Vancouver, improving access and attracting land speculators and settlers. A few established family farms near New Westminster. The City of Burnaby was incorporated in 1891 and named after Robert Burnaby, a Freemason, explorer, and legislator who served as private secretary to Colonel Richard Moody, the first land commissioner for the colony.

Burnaby is located at the geographical center of the Metro Vancouver area, occupying 24,320 acres (9,842 ha) between Vancouver to the west and Port Moody, Coquitlam, and New Westminster to the east. It is bounded by Burrard Inlet to the north and the Fraser River to the south. In 1935, Standard Oil of California established a refinery in Burnaby, one of the few heavy industries in the region at that time. A major expansion followed in the mid-1950s, during British Columbia’s post-war building boom. After significant oil deposits were discovered in Alberta in 1947, the Trans Mountain Pipeline Company was formed in 1951—jointly owned by Canadian Bechtel Limited. and Standard Oil—to construct a pipeline to the Burnaby refinery. Completed in 1953, this pipeline connected Alberta oil fields with the coast. Kinder Morgan Incorporated, a leading pipeline and energy storage company, began expanding the system in 2004 with a second pipeline running parallel to the original. Completed in 2008, the expansion increased capacity for transporting natural gas, crude oil, and petroleum products across Kinder Morgan’s network of approximately 84,000 miles (135,200 km) of pipelines. In 2013, Kinder Morgan applied to the Canadian National Energy Board to construct a third pipeline, largely parallel to the existing Trans Mountain line, to transport diluted bitumen from Edmonton. This expansion aimed to boost exports of Alberta’s controversial bituminous sands oil to the United States and Asia. In 2018, the Government of Canada acquired the pipeline through Trans Mountain Corporation, a subsidiary of the Crown-owned Canada Development Investment Corporation. The company is currently expanding the Westridge Marine Terminal to increase capacity from one to three berths for Aframax-size oil tankers. See a short video of the marine terminal expansion here. Read more here and here. Explore more of Westridge Marine Terminal and Burrard Inlet here: