New book ‘102 Things to Do with a Hole in the Ground‘ spotlights global reclamation projects
Stories of reinvented coal mining regions, regenerated communities and rebuilt ecosystems are told in a new book published this month.
The price oil sands producers received fell back to more than $37 a barrel below US benchmark crude this week, dropping to lows last seen in January.
The deepening discount paid for Western Canada Select – a blend of heavy oil sands crude and conventional oil – comes on top of a slide in West Texas Intermediate (WTI).
WTI dropped 1.8% to below $94.65 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange on Friday, down more than 3% during the week to levels last seen in June.
According to a US Energy Department report issued Wednesday oil stocks climbed by 4.1 million barrels over the past week, more than expected and the sixth rise in a row.
Global benchmark prices in the form of North Sea Brent also come under severe pressure trading at $105.85 on Friday amid a broad selloff in commodities.
MarketWatch quotes Darin Newsom, senior analyst at DTN, a commodity-market research company:
“Investment traders are giving up on commodities in general. The U.S. dollar index has seen a strong rebound, leading to increased selling in the three Kings of Commodities (gold, crude oil, and corn). Charts would indicate this isn’t going to change any time soon.”
Today’s effective price for for bitumen-derived oil from Alberta’s oil sands of $57.25 a barrel is the lowest since February this year with the discount more than doubling since early July.
The US is Canada’s sole customer for crude and the glut in the US has turned Canada into a price taker as pipeline projects suffer years of delays, denying domestic producers access to lucrative growing markets in Asia.
3 Comments
frankinca
It looks like the world will be awash with oil again, thanks to the fracking technology which is less environmentally affected because most of the “work” is being done underground. A recent stock holding of mine, bought for their dividend is Hi-crush limited Partners and they are big players in the US fracking game, providing pure crystal sand used in the process. Looks like oil sands have lost their glamor as an exportable energy solution. I am sure that the oil sands people will be financing a lot of negative fracking publicity, but it will be a losing game. It looks as if the most money to be made is in advertising or PR instead of products they are supposed to educate us about.
Free Rambler
When fracking peters out, oil sands will likely come back in fashion.
geneseehill
@frankinca I agree with your position on fracing sand as I read an article over the weekend that Whiting is starting to use an EOG method with great results but it requires a tremendous more amount of fracing sand. Canada needs to build multiple pipelines to the west coast instead of relying on sending it to the gulfcoast. The oil should be upgraded too. It will find buyers at a premium price then.