"With so much supply landlocked, Canadian oil prices are taking a serious hit. The benchmark price for Canadian heavy oil is Western Canada Select (WCS), which is currently trading at just US$59.33 per barrel. By contrast, WTI is priced at US$82.70, which means the differential is a whopping US$23.37 per barrel, or 28% higher.
Even Canadian synthetic – a partially upgraded bitumen product that has historically carried a premium to WTI – is trading at a discount to its American peer: Canadian synthetic is at US$79.13 per barrel.
It's a double-whammy differential: Canadian oil is heavy, which discounts its price; and the system to move it to suitable refineries is clogged up, creating another discount. Neither of those situations is going to change any time soon, and that means oil-sands projects may soon be on the chopping block.
The oil sands is one of the costliest oil regions in the world to develop; and with WCS prices so low, the economics behind many new oil-sands projects have become pretty weak. New oil-sands mines require a price of around US$80 per barrel to break even. If an upgrader is part of the plans, that break-even price rises to almost US$100. In-situ projects, which use wells and underground steam injection to extract oil from the sands in place, usually carry a break-even price near US$60 per barrel."
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-oil-price-differentials-caught-between-sands-and-pipelines