Locator: 50310B.
WTI: $87.62.
New wells reporting:
- Thursday, March 26, 2026: 38 for the month, 142 for the quarter, 142 for the year,
- 41368, conf, Hunt Oil, State C 156-90-4-36H-2,
- Wednesday, March 25, 2026: 37 for the month, 141 for the quarter, 141 for the year,
- 42247, conf, CLR, Richmond 6-26H,
- 42240, conf, CLR, Charleston 7-15H,
- 42188, conf, BR, Abercrombie 7-8-12UTFH,
- 41460, conf, Hunt Oil, State A 156-90-9-16H-5,
RBN Energy: how pipeline capacity scarcity and seasonality have impacted WCSB crude oil prices. Link here. Archived.
Crude oil supply from the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin (WCSB) continues to grow. At times, the regional crude surplus has exceeded outbound pipeline capacity. In today’s RBN blog, the third in a series, we’ll take a close look at periods of pipeline capacity surplus and scarcity, how these periods correlated with WCSB price discounts relative to U.S. price benchmarks, and examine seasonal price discount patterns.In Part 1 of this series, we discussed the drivers behind the near doubling of WCSB crude oil production from 2010 to 2025, as well as seasonal trends of WCSB production. In Part 2, we reviewed the major pipeline projects that expanded capacity to move barrels out of the WCSB, how the timing of those projects matched up with supply growth, and current export pipeline capacity.We’ll start today by looking at WCSB crude supply relative to export pipeline capacity. In Figure 1 below, we show total combined nameplate capacity for the six pipeline systems that move barrels out of the WCSB (light-green layer), the total amount of available pipeline capacity (blue line), and estimated WCSB crude oil supply available for export (black line). Looking at the difference between the two lines over time, we can see that there was little to no spare pipeline capacity in 2018-19, and off and on between late 2020 and mid-2024.
