Southern Pacific Resources

Last month (March 4, 2014) the first unit train shipment of railbit blend bitumen crude from Southern Pacific Resources Western Canadian oil sands project arrived at Genesis Energy’s Natchez, MS terminal in the Eastern Gulf Coast region. This is the first railbit unit train to hit our radar screen.  Railbit has less light hydrocarbon diluent blended with it than the 30 percent required for making heavy Canadian bitumen crude flow in pipelines. So using rail to ship railbit saves some of the “diluent penalty” that pipeline shippers incur by buying diluent for blending and shipping it with their crude. Today we look at the logistics behind this ground-breaking shipment.