Oil delivered by rail to California, the world’s ninth-largest economy, tumbled 29 percent in the third quarter as shipments from Canada were halted and deliveries from states including North Dakota dropped. The most populous U.S. state received 531,766 barrels of crude in rail-cars from July through September, down from 748,802 barrels in the prior three months, data posted on the state Energy Commission’s website show. Rail imports from Canada dropped to zero after totaling 76,648 barrels a quarter earlier. North Dakota, where fields in the Bakken formation are producing a record volume of crude, cut rail deliveries by 17 percent. Third-quarter rail shipments were up 9.5 percent from a year ago as West Coast refiners, facing declining supplies from California and Alaska, build rail offloading terminals to reach a glut of oil being extracted from shale formations in the middle of the country. Alaska supplied 12 percent of California’s […]