A lot of discussion happening about pipelines, market access and crude differentials these days. I’ve started using this map as a means of illustrating the various levels to this debate. First, it’s important to always note that all oil is not equal – if you’re looking at a WTI-WCS differential and getting really upset about it, keep in mind that you’re conflating heavy crude in Alberta with light crude in Oklahoma – there are pricing differences due to location and quality involved. It’s generally more useful to look at apples-to-apples comparisons, and for that a Maya-WCS differential is very useful. Today, Maya is trading at almost $25 per barrel above WCS based (almost entirely) on geography. Pipeline tolls to the Gulf Coast are less than $10 per barrel and so, if efficient infrastructure were in place, we could expect to see at least $15 more per barrel for our product today than we are currently receiving. That hurts.
Interesting. How much of Western Canadian production of roughly 4.2 million bbls/day is subject to this discount? Is it some portion of the roughly 50% of Western Canadian production that is “heavy”? Thanks!