Alberta oil is not interchangeable with the stuff coming out of Saudi Arabia. Andrew Leach, an energy economist at the University of Alberta, even said that comparing the two is like comparing apples and oranges. “Saudi crude and WCS (Western Canadian Select) doesn’t overlap much in terms of their markets,” he told the National Post. For one thing, most eastern Canadian refineries cannot process bitumen, the thick tar-like hydrocarbon that comes out of the Athabasca Oil Sands. Almost anybody can process Saudi Arabian crude, but only an elite fraternity of the world’s most complex refineries can turn Alberta bitumen into gasoline. To get to the east coast, Canadian oil also has to be shipped overland from more than 4,000 kilometres away, significantly adding to its total costs (Saudi Arabia is 10,000 kilometres away from the Canadian east coast, but tanker shipment is cheap). It’s also why Western Canadian Select, the industry name for most oil sands bitumen, sells at such a steep discount to more conventional oil types coming out of Saudi Arabia. In June, for instance, WCS sold at an average of USD$52.10 a barrel, compared to USD$67.87 for West Texas Intermediate (WTI), an oil category priced similarly to most Middle Eastern oils. “The oil Alberta produces is simply of a lower quality than … WTI, and is located farther away from customers,” writes the Alberta government in an online briefing note describing the WCS “discount.”