Three Wells Coming Off Confidential List -- December 27, 2021

Active rigs:

$73.58	12/27/2021	12/27/2020	12/27/2019	12/27/2018	12/27/2017
Active Rigs	32	13	56	67	51

Monday, December 27, 2021: 84 for the month, 113 for the quarter, 339 for the year:

• 38379, conf, Rampart Energy, Coteau 1, wildcat, no production data;

Sunday, December 26, 2021: 83 for the month, 112 for the quarter, 338 for the year:

• 36997, conf, CLR, LCU Ralph Federal 7-27H1, Long Creek, no production data,

Saturday, December 25, 2021: 82 for the month, 111 for the quarter, 337 for the year:

• 36998, conf, CLR, LCU Ralph Federal 6-27H, Long Creek, no production data,

RBN Energy: what's driving the wider WCS / WTI price spreads, part 2. 

You would expect the start-up of Enbridge’s Line 3 Replacement project early this fall to have eased the constraints on crude oil pipelines from Western Canada to the U.S. — and it did. You’d also expect that L3R coming online would narrow the price spread between Western Canadian Select and West Texas intermediate — but it didn’t. The latest widening of the WCS-WTI spread, one of many in recent years, is another reminder that oil price differentials can be affected by many factors other than pipeline capacity availability. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss the host of issues that affect this all-important Canadian oil price metric.

Over the past two decades, Canadian crude oil producers and shippers have often found themselves short of pipeline capacity to transport rising production to the U.S., their primary export market. These episodes typically resulted in deeper price discounts for Western Canadian Select (WCS) and other crude oil streams out of Canada versus West Texas Intermediate (WTI).

The solution would seem to be simple: Add more pipeline export capacity to reduce or eliminate the periods of deeper WCS price discounts. Building out new pipeline capacity has proven to be an immense regulatory and legal challenge over the years, but expansions have still occurred, with the latest addition being an upgrade to part of the existing Enbridge Mainline network, a series of crude oil pipelines that link Alberta to refiners in the U.S. Midwest, as well as important refiner destinations in Eastern Canada.