Two major pipelines carrying oil from Canada to the United States resumed operations on Wednesday after brief disruptions due to power outages from severe weather in Saskatchewan, Canada, a day earlier.
A number of lines on Enbridge Inc's Mainline system, which carries about 1.2 million barrels per day of crude and other liquids, and TransCanada Corp's 590,000 bpd Keystone crude pipeline were hit by power outages on Tuesday in the western Canadian province.
TransCanada's Keystone pipeline was operational on Wednesday after it experienced a brief outage due to power disruptions, the company said in an emailed statement on Wednesday.
Enbridge said its mainline system, which includes Lines 1, 2a, 3, 4 and 67, as well as Line 13, are back in service. The province's primary utility SaskPower restored electricity to pipeline operations there, but Enbridge said intermittent service outages may still occur.
Western Canadian Select (WCS) heavy oil prices strengthened on news of the restart, dealers said, trading at $23.50 a barrel below West Texas Intermediate benchmark prices. Prices traded at a discount of about $24.50 on Tuesday.
Both pipeline systems originate in Alberta, where most of Canada's oil is produced.
The outages came just days after the Alberta government announced forced cuts in crude production. Western Canadian oil producers have struggled to export crude because of full pipelines as production has surged to a record of more than 4.6 million bpd in 2018.
(Reporting by Devika Krishna Kumar and Julie Gordon; Editing by Marguerita Choy, Steve Orlofsky and Richard Chang)
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