Q: Good morning 5i Team
I'm getting myself up to speed on light oil versus heavy oil. WCS, which is a blend of bitumen and other Alberta oils is heavy oil. Canadian refineries for the most part can't process heavy oils (only about 100,000 barrels a day) so most is shipped to the US where refineries are optimized for the stuff. The general consensus is that more pipelines to US (not to tidewater) will allow more WCS to be shipped and will therefore aborb the additional supply that has come on stream recently.
My question is: With the US refineries already running at capacity, how can they absorb significantly more WCS?
I'm getting myself up to speed on light oil versus heavy oil. WCS, which is a blend of bitumen and other Alberta oils is heavy oil. Canadian refineries for the most part can't process heavy oils (only about 100,000 barrels a day) so most is shipped to the US where refineries are optimized for the stuff. The general consensus is that more pipelines to US (not to tidewater) will allow more WCS to be shipped and will therefore aborb the additional supply that has come on stream recently.
My question is: With the US refineries already running at capacity, how can they absorb significantly more WCS?