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CANADA-CRUDE-Discount on Western Canada Select heavy crude widens; some oil sands production restarts after wildfire disruptions

On Wednesday, the discount between the North American benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) and Western Canada Select (WCS), widened as some oil sands output that was temporarily halted due to the threat from nearby wildfires this week was restarted.

WCS for Hardisty, Alberta delivery in July settled at $9.10 per barrel below the U.S. benchmark WTI according to brokerage CalRock. It had settled at $9 per barrel below the U.S. standard on Tuesday.

As wildfires raged in Canada's oil producing province of Alberta, several oil sands companies evacuated workers to be on the safe side. As a result, about 344,000 barrels of production per day, or 7% of Canada’s average daily crude oil production, were disrupted.

Canadian Natural Resources (CNR), Canada's biggest crude producer, has restarted its Jackfish 1 facility and said that it expects to be back at full production by Friday, with approximately 36,500 barrels per day.

Martin King, an analyst at RBN Energy, believes that the 238,000 bpd production currently shut down by Cenovus Energy’s Christina Lake oil-sands facility will likely also resume in the near future as the threat to oil sands equipment in the area appears to be lessening.

Cenovus has not responded to the request for comment made on Wednesday.

King said that the fact that the discount on Canadian Heavy Crude has increased suggests the market is looking beyond the wildfire shutdowns. King said that when the production disruptions were short-lived, barrels could be pulled from storage by the market, which would limit any impact on WCS prices.

King stated that there had never been a real threat to the supply of goods in the short term.

* Oil prices fell just under 1% globally on Wednesday, after U.S. government data revealed a surprising large increase in gasoline and diesel stocks. OPEC+ is planning to increase production, and trade tensions are clouding the outlook for energy demand.

(source: Reuters)