Canadian heavy oil’s discount to U.S. crude — which shrank to the smallest in more than a year on Monday — may widen again in 2019 as the reality sets in that Alberta’s oil-transportation woes are far from solved. Those fundamentals include pipeline bottlenecks and 35 million barrels of oil in storage, he said. While Western Canadian Select prices have surged since mid November, helped by a provincial plan to curtail 325,000 barrels of daily output, trading has been thin and doesn’t reflect the fundamentals of the physical market. Enbridge Inc.’s Line 3 expansion should be online in the second half of the year, adding 370,000 barrels of new capacity, he said. “We’re seeing declining volumes from both of those jurisdictions,” Botterill said.

Source: thestar January 08, 2019 16:30 UTC