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Heavy and synthetic discounts narrow

June 10, 2019 4:25 PM
Reuters

The discount on Canadian heavy crude oil versus U.S. crude oil futures narrowed on Monday:

* Western Canada Select (WCS) heavy blend crude for July delivery in Hardisty, Alberta, settled at $13.65 per barrel below West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil, according to Net Energy Exchange. On Friday, WCS for July delivery settled at $14.10 a barrel below WTI crude futures.

* Over the weekend, Canadian Natural Resources Ltd regained access to its Pelican Lake operation in northern Alberta that was temporarily shut down as a precaution against wildfires nearby. The company is planning to ramp production back up to normal levels around 65,000 barrels per day.

* AltaCorp Capital analyst Nicholas Lupick said overall production impacts from the outage would likely be "immaterial" because Canadian Natural had offset the shut-in Pelican Lake volumes by boosting output at other projects affected by Alberta government production curtailments.

* Alberta crude oil production is currently capped at 3.71 million bpd. The provincial government imposed mandatory production cuts effective Jan. 1 to help drain a glut of crude in storage that was weighing on prices.

* Light synthetic crude from the oil sands for June delivery settled at $1.50 per barrel below U.S. crude, narrowing from Friday's settle of $1.75 a barrel below WTI.

* U.S. crude futures fell 73 cents to $53.26 a barrel as U.S.-China trade tensions continued to threaten demand for crude and as major producers Saudi Arabia and Russia had yet to agree on extending an output-cutting deal.

(Reporting by Nia Williams; Editing by Peter Cooney)
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