U.S. East Coast oil refiners are ramping up rail deliveries of crude from Western Canada, grabbing stranded barrels that full pipelines have driven to a record discount. That trend is expected to accelerate, as prices will remain weak, with no new Canadian export pipelines expected until late 2019. Rail volumes from Canada to East Coast refineries averaged 35,000 barrels a day for the 12 months ending in July, up from 16,000 bpd for the prior 12-month period. Canada is having difficulty building and expanding pipelines due to environmental and aboriginal opposition, prompting a swing back to its crude-by-rail delivery system. Bottlenecks helped drive the discount of Western Canadian Select heavy crude, the primary grade of oil produced in the […]