The Canadian heavy oil differential and light oil differential both widened against the West Texas Intermediate (WTI) benchmark on Wednesday, hitting new record-wide spreads as transportation bottlenecks and refinery outages weighed.
* Western Canada Select (WCS) heavy blend crude for November delivery in Hardisty, Alberta, settled at $52 a barrel below WTI crude futures , compared with Tuesday's settle of $48, according to Shorcan Energy brokers. * Light synthetic crude from the oil sands for November delivery settled at $29.90 under WTI, smashing a February 2012 record spread, versus Tuesday's settle of a $24.25 discount. * The hefty discounts on Canadian crudes reflect transportation bottlenecks out of Western Canada, along with softer demand as a number of U.S. refiners are offline for maintenance, analysts have said. * The situation was made worse after an Enbridge Inc natural gas pipeline ruptured in British Columbia late on Tuesday, causing service disruptions to refineries in Washington state, though analyst Matthew Murphy with Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co said those refineries only ran about 28,000 barrels per day of Canadian heavy oil in the second quarter. Canada's total production is about 4.2 million bpd. * Global oil prices dropped 2 percent on Wednesday as U.S. equity markets broadly fell, even though energy traders worried about shrinking Iranian supply from U.S. sanctions and kept an eye on Hurricane Michael, which closed some U.S. Gulf of Mexico oil output. (Reporting by Julie Gordon in Vancouver Editing by Toni Reinhold)