MarketScreener.com / Wall Street Journal / 1-31-19
The use of trains to carry crude is surging after dropping in recent years amid concerns about safety, as drillers in parts of North America produce more oil than area pipelines can accommodate.
An average of 718,000 barrels of crude a day traversed America's railways as of October, the latest data available, an 88% increase from a year earlier, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That compares with a peak average of about 1.1 million barrels in October 2014.
Much of the recent oil train growth is due to record shipments from Canada, where pipeline expansion projects, including Keystone XL and Trans Mountain, have stalled amid environmental opposition and legal delays. Crude-by-rail shipments also have ticked up from North Dakota's Bakken region and the Permian Basin of West Texas and New Mexico, according to energy-monitoring firm Genscape Inc.
The crude-by-rail comeback is expected to last through late this year in the Permian, and longer in North Dakota and Canada, as companies struggle to lay new pipe as quickly as drillers are getting oil out of the ground.
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https://www.marketscreener.com/CENOVUS-ENERGY-INC-5685053/news/Oil-Trains-Make-Comeback-as-Pipeline-Bottlenecks-Worsen-27941988/
