As mentioned above, many crude Oil carriers are too large to fit thorough the Panama Canal. To remedy this situation, a joint venture of the Panamanian government and U.S.-based Northville Industries built the Trans-Panama Pipeline (TPP) in 1982. The original purpose of the TPP was to facilitate Crude Oil shipments from Alaskas North Slope to refineries in the Caribbean and U.S. Gulf Coast regions. The idea was for very large crude carriers (VLCC), ships too large to transit the canal, to offload Alaskan crude on the Pacific side, then move the crude oil to another VLCC waiting on the Atlantic side. However, the 800,000-bbl/d TPP was shut down in 1996, as oil companies began shipping Alaskan crude along alternative routes. In 2003, Canadas EnCana contracted the pipeline to ship crude oil from Ecuador to the Caribbean, but the company only utilized an estimated 15 percent of the systems capacity. In February 2005, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez began talks with the Panamanian government on reversing the flow of the pipeline. This would allow for the possibility of Venezuelan crude oil exports to China by 2007.