Calgary Financial Post On The Canadian Pacific - Kansas City Southern Deal -- March 23, 2021

This story is followed at this post.

From The Calgary [Alberta] Financial Post, "Canadian oil producers see a new route to Gulf Coast refineries coming from the CP Rail deal. Rail route looks promising after cancellation of Keystone pipeline." From the linked article:

Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd.’s blockbuster US$25-billion deal for Kansas City Southern offers new hope for expanded access to the Gulf Coast for Canadian oil producers that have struggled to reach heavy oil markets in Texas and Louisiana.

Canadian oil and gas companies have for years tried to expand their options to ship heavy oil from Alberta to the southern coast of the United States, but their efforts to reach the world’s largest concentration of heavy oil refineries have been challenged time and time again. Most recently, U.S. President Joe Biden cancelled permits for the Keystone XL pipeline.

CP Rail’s deal with KCS “looks promising, but we’ll have to see what they actually do,” said Tristan Goodman, president of the Explorers and Producers Association of Canada, which represents mid-sized oil and gas companies.

“They’re not terminating in a great area for us, quite frankly,” he said of CP Rail’s existing network, “so joining forces does have a benefit.”

My hunch: even if regulators don't approve this merger Canadian Pacific and KSC could certainly work together to move oil from Canada to the Gulf coast. I assume that is already occurring.  

More from the article:

Currently, crude by rail accounts for about five per cent of revenue at CP and about two per cent at KCS. The two companies believe the deal will boost these revenues.

CP spokesperson Jeremy Berry in an emailed statement said the company plans to use a crude-by-rail facility in Alberta that pulls the blending agents out of heavy crude oil to create a “pipeline-competitive way of delivering Alberta energy products to market by rail.”

He added: “We can do this as the combination will provide for a more direct and efficient route to refineries on the Gulf Coast.”

A combination of energy products, including crude oil and fracking sand, chemicals and plastics, make up roughly 20 per cent of CP Rail’s total freight revenue, Morningstar analyst Matthew Young said in a research note.