{"id":731278,"date":"2026-06-12T05:11:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T05:11:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/731278\/"},"modified":"2026-06-12T05:11:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T05:11:14","slug":"canadian-oil-outages-bad-weather-to-tighten-inventories-at-key-us-storage-hub","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/731278\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadian oil outages, bad weather to tighten inventories at key US storage hub"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wet weather and a power outage at a major oil sands producer have contributed to crude export supply tightness out of Western Canada, that could tighten supplies to the key Cushing storage hub in Oklahoma and to U.S. Midwest refineries.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Supply disruptions \u200cin Western Canada are adding to an already tight global market as a fifth of the global oil and \u2060gas shipments are stuck behind the Strait of \u200cHormuz due to the U.S.\/Israel war in Iran.<\/p>\n

U.S. crude inventories, including those from strategic reserves, have fallen by 79 million barrels since the Iran war \u2060began in late February, with inventories at Cushing nearing operational lows.<\/a><\/p>\n

Canada is the world\u2019s fourth-largest oil producer, \u200cand the largest foreign supplier of crude oil to the U.S., with the oil flowing into storage tanks at Cushing and \u2060to Midwest and Gulf Coast refineries.<\/p>\n

Story continues below advertisement<\/p>\n

The U.S. \u200cMidwest refiners, which have no access to waterborne crude, are heavily dependent on Canadian oil and many of the region\u2019s refineries have been designed to handle oil sands crude.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tRefineries in the U.S. \u200cMidwest, which have no access to waterborne crude supplies, are heavily dependent on Canadian oil and many of the region\u2019s refineries have been designed to handle oil sands crude.\t\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tAP Photo\/Charlie Riedel, File\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

But recent heavy rains in northern Alberta have temporarily slowed the pace of oil sands mining, while a power outage last week at Cenovus Energy\u2019s Foster Creek and Christina Lake operations prompted the \u200ccompany to declare a force majeure, three sources told Reuters.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\"Get<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tGet weekly money news<\/p>\n

Get expert insights, Q&A on markets, housing, inflation, and personal finance information delivered to you every Saturday.<\/p>\n

The power outage temporarily took about 10 per cent of the company\u2019s oil sands production \u2060offline, according to an Energy Aspects research note last week.<\/p>\n

Cenovus did not immediately reply to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

Canadian crude has also been in high demand since the war in Iran began, especially from Asian buyers who see the country as a safe, secure source \u200bof supply.<\/p>\n

Story continues below advertisement<\/p>\n

Canada\u2019s Trans Mountain pipeline, which transports Canadian heavy oil to the Pacific \u200bcoast for export overseas, including to Asia, is running at full capacity for the first time since the completion \u200cof a major expansion two years ago.<\/p>\n

Western Canadian crude inventories are at their lowest level since 2020, Wood Mackenzie analyst Lee Williams said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs of last week, Western Canadian crude \u2060inventories had decreased by more than 4 \u200cmillion barrels over the past two weeks and by nearly 8 million barrels since the end of February,\u201d \u200cWilliams said in an email.<\/p>\n

Canadian \u200bheavy crude prices have strengthened significantly in the last week-and-a-half, with \u2060the discount \u2060on Western Canada Select to North American benchmark West Texas Intermediate narrowing by approximately $4 since the end of May.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Click<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t1:49
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tIran war standoff pushes oil prices to 4-year high\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wet weather and a power outage at a major oil sands producer have contributed to crude export supply…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":731279,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[45,49,48,46,134,9891,15999,178595,3275],"class_list":["post-731278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-economy","tag-money","tag-oil-prices","tag-oil-supply","tag-oilsands","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=731278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731278\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/731279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=731278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=731278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=731278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}