Alberta expects $1.7bn profit from giant crude-by-rail plan

Bloomberg

Alberta is preparing a giant crude-by-rail operation to help its oil-sands producers cope with a pipeline crunch, and it expects a big profit from the venture.
The Canadian province, which holds the world’s third-largest crude reserves, plans to net C$2.2 billion ($1.7 billion) after investing C$3.7 billion to lease tank cars and buy service from rail providers, generating C$5.9 billion from sales and increased royalty and tax revenue, according to a statement.
The rail plan is one of Alberta Premier Rachel Notley’s signature moves to help the province’s oil producers, who have been hurt by pipeline shortages that have made it difficult to ship their crude to refiners on the US Gulf Coast, weighing on prices. The plan also comes after Notley mandated production cuts to ease the strain on shipping capacity and work down a glut of oil that had built up in storage.
Not all oil companies have the capital to invest in crude by rail, Notley said at a press conference in explaining why government intervention was necessary. “That’s why it was important to step up,” she said.
The deal reached with Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. and Canadian National Railway Co. entails leasing 4,400 rail cars over three years, buying crude from the province’s producers, and then shipping the oil to
various markets through-out North America. The province expects to generate revenue from the profit it turns on selling crude to refiners, as well as from the higher oil prices that the additional shipping capacity will support.
Alberta’s investment in rail comes as companies struggle to get new oil pipelines built to get Alberta’s crude to markets even as production rose and pipeline bottlenecks developed, causing heavy Canadian crude’s discount to West Texas Intermediate futures to widen to $50 a barrel in October. “The inves- tment in crude by rail and the elevation of the amount of crude going by rail comes as a result of successive federal government failings” to get new pipelines approved and built, Notley said.
Last year, Canada’s federal government bought the Trans Mountain pipeline from Kinder Morgan Inc. to keep alive a project to expand the only pipeline that carries Alberta’s crude to the Pacific Coast. That project later suffered a setback when a court ruled that the National Energy Board would have to resume regulatory hearings. The rail service will begin in July with about 20,000 barrels a day before ramping up to its full capacity of 120,000 barrels a day by mid-2020.