Wow – this is kind of dire.
The Alberta tar sands are quite hard to turn into useable products such as gasoline. They haul a lot of it south to refine and mix with the lighter crude from the US. When the price of oil is in the $100 range, it is all good – not so much when it is where it is at now. It is causing a terrible recession in the Alberta economy and in Canada, as well. That one sector in the natural resource market was what was carrying the Canadian economy while the USA was suffering in 2008/2009.
Now, it is struggling.
Here is the commentary I was reading:
Forget $20 – Oil Price for a barrel of bitumen at $8.35 Per Barrel In Canada.
Where is the cheapest crude oil in the world? And how low can you get that barrel of oil?
WTI has declined to $30 per barrel, the lowest level in more than 12 years. But heavy oil producers in Canada would love to have $30 oil.
The price for a barrel of bitumen, the tar-like oil sands that comes from Alberta, fell to just over $8 per barrel this week. That is not a typo. Bitumen traded at $8.35 per barrel on Tuesday.
In fact, Amazon.com sells oil drums – just the barrel, not the oil – for $78, almost ten times the cost of the actual bitumen. To be fair, that drum holds 55 gallons instead of the industry-usual 42 gallons. But even a 30-gallon barrel – again, an empty barrel – costs 7 times more than the oil sands that would go in it.
And, as if on cue, here goes a hydro-cracker up there in Edmonton on a Chinese funded oil project:
https://twitter.com/rock979/status/688163174575550465
As profits decrease, you will see more and more corners cut on maintenance and investment. This will equal more accidents….. Same thing in my industry. It all has to pencil out – and safety and quality usually goes first.
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Wow – this is kind of dire.
The Alberta tar sands are quite hard to turn into useable products such as gasoline. They haul a lot of it south to refine and mix with the lighter crude from the US. When the price of oil is in the $100 range, it is all good – not so much when it is where it is at now. It is causing a terrible recession in the Alberta economy and in Canada, as well. That one sector in the natural resource market was what was carrying the Canadian economy while the USA was suffering in 2008/2009.
Now, it is struggling.
Here is the commentary I was reading:
Forget $20 – Oil Price for a barrel of bitumen at $8.35 Per Barrel In Canada.
Where is the cheapest crude oil in the world? And how low can you get that barrel of oil?
WTI has declined to $30 per barrel, the lowest level in more than 12 years. But heavy oil producers in Canada would love to have $30 oil.
The price for a barrel of bitumen, the tar-like oil sands that comes from Alberta, fell to just over $8 per barrel this week. That is not a typo. Bitumen traded at $8.35 per barrel on Tuesday.
In fact, Amazon.com sells oil drums – just the barrel, not the oil – for $78, almost ten times the cost of the actual bitumen. To be fair, that drum holds 55 gallons instead of the industry-usual 42 gallons. But even a 30-gallon barrel – again, an empty barrel – costs 7 times more than the oil sands that would go in it.
And, as if on cue, here goes a hydro-cracker up there in Edmonton on a Chinese funded oil project:
https://twitter.com/rock979/status/688163174575550465
As profits decrease, you will see more and more corners cut on maintenance and investment. This will equal more accidents….. Same thing in my industry. It all has to pencil out – and safety and quality usually goes first.
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