An outage on the largest oil pipeline to the United States from Canada could affect inventories at a key U.S. storage hub and cut crude supplies to two oil refining centers, analysts and traders said on Friday.
TC Energy’s (TRP.TO) Keystone pipeline ferries about 600,000 barrels of Canadian crude per day (bpd) to the United States. It was shut late Wednesday after a breach spewed more than 14,000 barrels of oil into a Kansas creek, making it the largest crude spill in the United States in nearly a decade. [n1N32Z26L]
The main question continues to be the duration of the potential outage… the longer the duration, ultimately, of course means potentially tighter inventories in Cushing or heavy (crude) on the Gulf Coast,” said Michael Tran, a managing director at RBC Capital markets.
The line runs directly to the Cushing, Oklahoma, storage hub, which is currently about a third full with nearly 24 million barrels in stock.
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If the outage last for more than 10 days, it could push Cushing storage to near the operational minimum of 20 million barrels, said AJ O’Donnell, a director at pipeline researcher East Daley Capital.
Volumes in the fourth quarter will be “materially affected,” as Keystone likely will run at a considerably lower pressure at least for some time once it restarts, said Harshit Gupta, Arc Independent research.
