Data points or quotes:
In energy, our strategy has delivered our fifth conservative quarter of double-digit revenue growth as our crude-by-rail program gains wider adoption by producers and marketers who are diversifying their supply chains by investing in a rail model. Change is underway at CP, and our focus on creating a better product for our customers and securing full value for our services.
We continue to execute our Bakken expansion strategy and gain traction in the implementation of our crude-by-rail model in both Alberta and Saskatchewan. This strategy will create a diversified mix of origination capability covering light, medium and heavy grades of crude. Crude volumes continue to trend upwards and we will hit the annualized 70,000 carload target in early 2013, more than a year sooner than expected. CP customer expansion plans are proceeding, and we expect to sustain our growth momentum. But I will speak to more about this market at our upcoming Investor Day.
Yes, I think what I would say here is that we've seen this volume in our crude by rail portfolio ramp up rather quickly. I mean, we've been talking before around 13,000 carloads last year, and we've moved ahead our target, the 70,000 carloads, by just about a year. Clearly, we do have franchise capabilities, and we look at that, certainly, marketplace in the Eastern part of the United States, it's a very, very positive market. We started with, certainly with ethanol moving it into that market. We basically filtered our crude by rail model starting -- looking at select locations on the light sweet crude side out of the Bakken. And now we're seeing volumes of this traffic starting to make it [indiscernible] in the East Coast, south of Saskatchewan, and possibly I know we have plans targeted for Alberta as well. So clearly this is a place where you take your franchise opportunities. You basically focus on running the best network and supply chain that you possibly can because that's how you run that play. So we look at that market as one of the areas for growth but again, we also look at the Gulf, we look at the West Coast, and we look at other locations as well because we think there's an opportunity to make our markets. And we feel confident that the product that we're putting there is putting value in the market. And I think the real test that we're seeing is, not only are we providing it to Hunter's point where you're seeing this volume increase, but we're seeing real investments by the customers in crude by rail, in cars and in facilities and in terminals. And that's where we really see the upside in this market.
