“It’s hard for the railroads to change their operating plan really quickly,” Steve Owens, rail analyst at IHS Markit, said in a phone interview with World Oil. “There are equipment constraints and crew constraints.” Heavy oil prices dropped to a four-year low this week, causing a boost in demand from American buyers. But the pipeline shut down and a preexisting grain delivery backlog are putting pressure on the railway infrastructure. The Canadian rail system had already put a pause on its oil delivery business prior to the current crisis. “For crude, and it is by choice, we will take a bit of a growth pause,” Jean-Jacques Ruest, Canadian National’s chief marketing officer, said during an investor conference call back in October. “We get the sense that customers still have capacity in the pipeline. Otherwise they’d be maybe behaving differently. They would be more willing to make commitments.” Western Canadian […]