By Mike De Souza and Nia Williams
CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - TransCanada Corp (TO:TRP) said it expects to raise its dividend and bring C$13 billion ($9.76 billion) of new small and medium-sized projects into service by the end of 2018, following the rejection of its Keystone XL crude pipeline.
Canada's second largest pipeline company said on Tuesday at an investor day in Toronto that it anticipates increasing its common share dividend at an average annual rate of 8 to 10 percent through 2020.
The company outlined plans to bring new projects into service, pending regulatory approval, including C$6 billion of U.S. and Canadian gas pipeline expansions, C$2 billion of Mexican gas pipelines, C$3 billion of regional liquids pipelines and C$2 billion of power generation facilities.
It also plans to extend the reach of its existing 545,000 barrel per day Keystone pipeline to the U.S. Gulf Coast to access refineries in the Houston, Texas City and Lake Charles areas.
TransCanada said capital spending is expected to be C$7.3 billion in 2016, and C$14 billion over the next three years.
The company is keen to highlight projects other than Keystone XL after U.S. President Barack Obama finally rejected the controversial cross-border pipeline earlier this month, more than seven years after it was first proposed.
"Keystone has attracted a lot of headlines over the last five years: the last couple of weeks, a couple of thousand news stories. Despite that there (are) a lot of other things going on with the company," Chief Executive Russ Girling said.
Obama said Keystone XL, intended to ship 830,000 barrels per day of mainly oil sands crude to Nebraska en route to the Gulf Coast, would not make a meaningful contribution to the U.S. economy. Environmentalists claimed a historic victory.
Even so, TransCanada vowed to keep pressing to build the pipeline and said on Tuesday it was reviewing its options.
The company is also developing its 1.1 million bpd Energy East project to Canada's Atlantic Coast although it scrapped plans this month to build a second marine export terminal for the pipeline.
($1 = 1.3317 Canadian dollars)