Continental Resources, Inc. (CLR), Whiting Petroleum Corp (WLL): Will North Dakota’s Oil-by-Rail Trend Last Forever?

With that in mind, let’s look at the Brent-WTI spread year-to-date:

Brent WTI Spread data by YCharts

It’s pretty clear that the spread has narrowed significantly from the middle of February, when it was just shy of $25, to right now, when it’s just shy of $8.

Bottom line
North Dakota’s rail capacity is about 800,000 barrels per day right now, while its pipeline capacity is only 583,000 bpd. Because of that constraint, it’s unlikely we’ll see rail disappear altogether, but we may very well see a rebalancing sometime in the near future.

Beyond that, it’s important to know what happens to your investments when the price of oil rises or falls, but it’s arguably much more important not to get caught up trying to predict when that will happen. We could wake up tomorrow to find that some geopolitical conflict has caused the price of Brent to soar — you just never know. Instead, think about possible scenarios and pick the stocks that are most resilient, regardless of what actually ends up happening.

The article Will North Dakota’s Oil-by-Rail Trend Last Forever? originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Aimee Duffy.

Fool contributor Aimee Duffy has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned.

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