Heated and Coiled Rail Tank Car

The saga of Western Canadian producers struggling to get increasing volumes of heavy crude to market in the US has not been pretty. In 2010 the rude interruption of surging Bakken crude output competing for space on pipelines built for Canadian crude contributed to a logjam in the Midwest. Now that logjam is finally unwinding and pipeline capacity to the Gulf Coast is opening up. And Canadian producers suddenly have the option to ship bitumen crude to market competitively by rail. Today we investigate why they may be hesitating to jump on board that train.