Pipeline constraints, refinery maintenance, Western Canadian crude… EIA

The EIA’s excellent Today in Energy series covers a timely topic today, here…  First the news…

”Alberta Premier Rachel Notley announced Sunday the province will require producers with more than 10,000 barrels per day of output to cut production by about 8.7 per cent until there is enough shipping space on pipelines to improve prices, expected to take three months.”

And here is the EIA explaining the problem:

“Planned maintenance at several large refineries in the Midwest has decreased the volume of crude oil processed in the region, which has resulted in lower prices of Western Canadian Select (WCS), a crude oil typically processed in the Midwest. WCS crude oil is typically priced lower than other crude oils because of differences in crude oil quality, but increasing production of WCS and pipeline capacity constraints in Western Canada have resulted in even lower prices of WCS compared with crude oil benchmarks such as Brent.”