Quote:
Originally Posted by DiracSpike
You’re right, eastern refineries are tooled for light oil and not sour heavy like WCS is. So the Saint John component of energy east would have been to export that heavy to markets that do need it, namely the us gulf coast.
That’s not to say we couldn’t completely supply eastern Canada’s light requirements tho, we could. The product that comes from most oil sands mines is synthetic crude oil, which is upgraded heavy bitumen. This blend has all the same properties as the light WTI that these refineries import now. So while the conversation around pipelines tends to center on heavy crude because of the differential we have no shortage of light volumes that could completely supplant current east coast imports.
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The East isn't a captive market so they're going to want something cheap and synthetic crude isn't cheap.