Canada Ping!
Posted on 09/24/2014 10:32:24 AM PDT by thackney
Canada's largest oil and gas producer, Suncor Energy Inc, is shipping its first ever tanker of Western Canadian heavy crude from Canada's East Coast to Europe, a company spokeswoman said on Tuesday.
Suncor spokeswoman Sneh Seetal confirmed Reuters shipping data that shows the aframax tanker Minerva Gloria was set to pick up a cargo of crude oil from the port of Sorel-Tracy on the St. Lawrence River in Quebec.
Seetal declined to comment on where in Europe the crude cargo is going, citing commercial confidentiality. According to Reuters data it will be discharged in the Mediterranean.
The crude was delivered by rail to a storage facility in Sorel-Tracy that is owned by Kildair Service Ltd.
Barclays analyst Michael Cohen said he did not know of any other instances of a cargo of Western Canadian crude making its way to Europe via rail and tanker from Canada's East Coast.
For years producers in the oil sands in the landlocked province of Alberta in Western Canada have been desperately seeking ways to get their crude to tidewater and higher-priced international markets.
The emergence of this new and largely unnoticed export route is likely to incense environmentalists who are seeking to block any avenue for shipping crude from the Alberta oil sands, where production entails high greenhouse-gas emissions, to refiners.
But it shows that despite environmentalists' efforts for the past six years to stall the Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta to the U.S. Gulf Coast, companies facing growing production of oil sands crude, and deepening discounts, are seeking other means, including rail, to get their crude to markets.
The shipment also shows how Canada's heavy crude is starting to compete with crude from producers such as Russia and Saudi Arabia for customers in Europe. Pipeline company Enbridge Inc shipped a first cargo of...
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
ping
Because railroads (especially Warren Buffets railroads) are so much more environmentally safe than pipelines.
They have already been exporting to Asia via the West Coast.
Canada Ping!
Western Canadian Select, a heavy, high-sulfur blend of Alberta oils and bitumen, is among the cheapest crudes in the world, priced at about $76 a barrel yesterday, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s about $19 less than Dated Brent, the global benchmark. Two cargoes of Russian Urals, a medium, sour grade, recently sold for about $2 less than Dated Brent.
It costs about $12 a barrel to rail WCS from Alberta to Montreal, and $3.50 more to ship by tanker, said Simon Jacques, a Saint John, New Brunswick-based consultant who advises energy traders on shipping economics.
Suncor built a rail terminal near Montreal at the end of 2013 with capacity to offload about 36,000 barrels a day of crude, according to company regulatory filings. It had been used to supply crude to the company’s 137,000-barrel-a-day refinery there.
http://fuelfix.com/blog/2014/09/24/suncor-looks-east-to-find-buyers-for-western-canada-crude/
What about that pipeline that Enbridge is building out to Vancouver terminals to parallel the existing pipeline? The Canadians were building this as a response to the US for not completing the keystone XL line. As for rail shipments, the environuts are using the EPA and DOT as a club to beat down any more increases in rail shipments in the US. BTW, the environuts are pulling the same crap with coal shipments from the Powder River basin out to the west coast for export shipments. I also seen an article that the Canadians were looking into building a coal trans-ship terminal on their west coast also. The railroad that I work for has been keeping a close eye on all of this (UP, not BN). A lot of our business comes from servicing the oil fields and their related industries, not to mention buying crazy amounts of diesel fuel at market prices.
Maybe you mean Kinder Morgan?
Kinder Morgan Energy Partners said Thursday {April 12, 2012} it will begin a $5 billion expansion of its Trans Mountain pipeline, nearly tripling the capacity of crude oil it can ship to Canada's west coast—the latest project aimed at moving the country's rising oil production to markets outside the U.S.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304356604577339972995473802
“According to Reuters data it will be discharged in the Mediterranean.”
Won’t that make a big mess? Lol, bad choice of words, I think.
Another report I read said it went to Spain but yeah the wording could have been better.
I knew it was someone who was building a new pipeline. In any case, the Canadians have decided that they will have to go their own way, and sell to markets that aren’t browbeaten by hostile environmentalists.
I figure most of it will still come to the US. We will still be a closer customer. Politics aside, it is private companies exporting and importing. They still want the lowest price (cheapest transport) available to them. If political numbskulls prevent the cheapest method, those companies will still use the next cheapest.
American resid has been sold in the Med for many years.
Oh yeah, this isn’t the first heavy stuff to go over there.
This was likely due to the fact the local Quebec Refinery that would normally take this bitumen is down for maintenance.
Can you please humor me? Are there a lot of heavy crude refineries in Europe? Are they for Venezuelan crude?
I don’t know about a lot, and “heavy” can be a broad description; most are not as heavy as the bitumen from Canada.
But heavy oil is found all over the world.
https://www.rigzone.com/training/heavyoil/
Among the more notable heavy oil reserves are: Venezuela’s Orinoco Heavy Oil Belt; Canada’s Athabasca Oil Sands; Russia’s Volga-Ural Basin; Brazil’s offshore Campos Basin; Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay; and China’s Luda field in Bohai Bay.
https://www.rigzone.com/training/heavyoil/insight.asp?i_id=194
Thanks much. I have a great appreciation for all petroleum products. Including thin and thick grades of roofing tar that I have been using on a roof. Tar as a sealant goes way back.
You know that pitch was how boats were sealed-caulked for centuries. Pitch being from timber distillation
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