Imperial restarts oil by rail

Article Excerpt

IMPERIAL OIL LTD. $38.73 (Toronto symbol IMO; Shares outstanding: 777.6 million; Market cap: $29.9 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Average; Dividend yield: 2.0%; www.imperialoil.ca) is Canada’s third-largest publicly traded oil company, after Suncor (No. 1) and Canadian Natural Resources. Late last year, the Alberta government ordered oil producers in the province to cut their total daily output. That’s because a lack of new pipeline capacity has led to a glut of stored crude oil in the province and has helped to push down the price for Western Canadian crude. The Alberta plan made it less economical for Imperial to ship its crude by rail to U.S. markets. As a result, it cut rail shipments from about 170,000 barrels a day in December 2018 to almost zero in February 2019. To put that in context, Imperial produced 383,000 barrels a day in 2018. However, now that crude prices have recovered, and it is once again economical to do so, Imperial has resumed limited oil shipments by rail. Imperial Oil…