- Metro Transit will extend light rail service after the Taylor Swift concerts in Minneapolis Star Tribune
- Taylor Swift in Minneapolis: Metro Transit extends bus, train service FOX 9 Minneapolis-St. Paul
- Metro Transit to extend service in downtown Minneapolis after Taylor Swift shows CBS Minnesota
- Heading to see Taylor Swift? Metro Transit can get you home safe and sound after all MPR News
- Metro Transit: Free Rice Street ride, no late-night trains (yet) for Taylor Swift, MVTA ‘Swiftie Bus,’ upcoming I-94 closures St. Paul Pioneer Press
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Tag Archives: extend
Derrick White’s career night to extend Celtics season rooted in message from Dad – The Athletic
- Derrick White’s career night to extend Celtics season rooted in message from Dad The Athletic
- ‘Big-time player, big-time shots’: Derrick White is essential to the Celtics’ playoff success, and he came alive in Game 5 The Boston Globe
- Celtics-Heat takeaways: Boston blitzes Miami in Game 5 to continue ECF comeback NBC Sports Boston
- Stephen A. Smith Praises Derrick White (And His Hairline) For Game 5 Showing NESN
- Analyst reveals shocking pick for second-best Boston Celtics player in Heat series Hardwood Houdini
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Mets To Extend Jeff McNeil
The Mets and second baseman Jeff McNeil are in agreement on a four-year, $50MM contract extension, ESPN’s Jeff Passan reports. The contract contains a club option for a fifth season, which could allow the extension to max out at $63.75MM over five years. The deal buys out the final two arbitration seasons for the Paragon Sports International client, and the Mets will gain control over what would’ve been McNeil’s first three free-agent seasons.
Unable to come to terms on a one-year salary for the upcoming season, McNeil and the Mets appeared headed toward an arbitration hearing. He’d filed for a $7.75MM on the heels of his first National League batting title in 2021, whereas the Mets had countered with a $6.25MM figure. Those sums can now be thrown out, as McNeil’s final two arbitration years are locked in. If we count 2023 at the $7MM midpoint of those two sums and figure McNeil could’ve earned anywhere from $12-13MM in what would’ve been his final arbitration season, the Mets are guaranteeing somewhere in the vicinity of an additional $30MM to lock in two more free-agent seasons and secure a reasonably priced club option on a third free-agent year.
McNeil, 31 in April, is now locked in through at least his age-34 campaign and possibly his age-35 season. He’s fresh off one of the finest seasons of his career, having turned in a .326/.382/.454 batting line with nine home runs, 39 doubles, a triple and four stolen bases in 589 plate appearances. Unsurprisingly, that season earned him a second career All-Star nod and won him Silver Slugger honors in the National League — his first such award.
McNeil was one of the toughest strikeouts in the Majors, fanning in a career-low 10.4% of his plate appearances. He’s never walked much and didn’t change that in 2022 (6.8%), but it’s difficult to argue with the results. McNeil benefited to an extent from a career-high .353 average on balls in play, but even if that mark regresses toward the .324 mark he carried into the 2022 season, his bat-to-ball skills and penchant for finding the gaps will allow him to remain the well above-average hitter he was for the majority of the 2018-21 seasons.
The 2022 season was also very arguably the finest defensive season of McNeil’s career. Each of Defensive Runs Saved (3), Ultimate Zone Rating (3.5) and Outs Above Average (7) pegged him as a strong handler of the glove at second base. He also logged some brief time in the outfield corners (278 innings) and drew average or better reviews for his work there, and he even chipped in a lone inning at third base for good measure. Second base will continue to be his primary home on the diamond, but McNeil has shown in the past that he’s a capable third baseman, left fielder or right fielder, which only adds to his value for the Mets.
Of course, since we’re discussing the Mets, the financial ramifications of the contract extend well beyond the $50MM that McNeil himself will receive. The Mets are already over the fourth and final luxury-tax barrier this season, meaning any dollars they spend are taxed at a 90% clip. Had McNeil won his arbitration hearing and secured a $7.75MM salary, that would’ve meant the Mets would’ve paid $6.975MM in taxes on his salary — bringing the total expenditure to $14.725MM. Instead, the Mets will now be taxed based on the $12.5MM average annual value of McNeil’s contract. That means they’ll pay $11.25MM in taxes on McNeil’s contract this year — an increase of $4.275MM over what they’d have paid him had he won an arbitration hearing.
There’s some down-the-road tax benefit to extending McNeil — even beyond the obvious value in keeping an excellent player at a reasonable rate for the next half decade. Had McNeil won an arbitration hearing next month — and coming off a batting title, he’d have had a strong case — he’d have landed that $7.75MM salary. With another strong season, he’d quite possibly have been in for a raise beyond the $12.5MM AAV of his current contract in his final arb season, when the Mets will likely again be in the top tier of luxury penalization (with overages being taxed at a 110% clip). The extension, then, could wind up saving the Mets $1MM or so off their luxury ledger for the 2024 season — assuming McNeil has a healthy and productive 2023 campaign.
Setting aside any such minutiae, the primary benefit to the Mets is simply keeping a two-time All-Star and paying an annual rate that, with good health for McNeil, will likely clock in below his true open-market value by the time the 2024-25 offseason rolls around. There’s certainly some risk for the Mets, as one need only look at McNeil’s pedestrian .251/.319/.360 batting line from 2021 to see that his lack of power (outside of the juiced ball campaign in 2019) leaves him with a fairly tepid floor. The Mets already had control over McNeil’s age-31 and age-32 seasons, and it’s always possible that preemptively buying out a player’s age-33 through age-35 seasons could look regrettable in hindsight.
That said, the aforementioned ’21 campaign is the lone below-average offensive season of McNeil’s career, and his contact skills and defensive aptitude at multiple positions figure to make him a perennially useful player even into his mid-30s. It’s not realistic to expect him to replicate his 2022 production in the years ahead, but there’s little reason to think this deal will turn into some form of egregious misstep, either.
McNeil now joins Max Scherzer ($43MM), Justin Verlander ($43MM), Francisco Lindor ($34.1MM), Brandon Nimmo ($20.5MM), Starling Marte ($20.75MM), Edwin Diaz ($21.25MM), Kodai Senga ($15MM), Jose Quintana ($13MM) and Tomas Nido ($2.1MM) as players locked into their 2024 salaries.
Assuming an even distribution of McNeil’s salary, that’d come out to just over $225MM guaranteed to 10 players, with another four club options (Mark Canha, Eduardo Escobar, Brooks Raley, Darin Ruf), two player options (Omar Narvaez, Adam Ottavino) and a nine-player arbitration class headlined by Pete Alonso all potentially adding to the bill.
High Blood Pressure Medication Shown To Slow Aging and Extend Lifespan
A study recently published in the journal Aging Cell found that administering rilmenidine, a medication used to treat hypertension, to animals at both young and older ages increases lifespan and enhances overall health markers, similar to the effects of caloric restriction.
Researchers have discovered that the hypertension drug rilmenidine can extend lifespan and slow aging.
New research findings, published on January 20 in the journal Aging Cell, show that animals treated with rilmenidine, currently used to treat hypertension (high blood pressure), at young and older ages increase lifespan and improve health markers, mimicking the effects of caloric restriction. Rilmenidine, which is a prescription medication, is marketed under the brand names Albarel, Hyperium, Iterium, and Tenaxum.
They also demonstrate that the healthspan and lifespan benefits of rilmenidine treatment in the roundworm C. elegans are mediated by the I1-imidazoline receptor nish-1, identifying this receptor as a potential longevity target.
Unlike other drugs previously studied for this purpose by the researchers, the widely-prescribed, oral antihypertensive rilmenidine has the potential for future translatability to humans as side effects are rare and non-severe.
To date, a caloric restriction diet has been considered the most robust anti-aging intervention, promoting longevity across
Reference: “Rilmenidine extends lifespan and healthspan in Caenorhabditis elegans via a nischarin I1-imidazoline receptor” by Dominic F. Bennett, Anita Goyala, Cyril Statzer, Charles W. Beckett, Alexander Tyshkovskiy, Vadim N. Gladyshev, Collin Y. Ewald and João Pedro de Magalhães, 20 January 2023, Aging Cell.
DOI: 10.1111/acel.13774
This study was undertaken by researchers from the University of Liverpool, ETH Zürich, and Harvard Medical School, and funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, LongeCity, and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.
Hypertension Drug Shown to Extend Lifespan And Slow Aging in Animals : ScienceAlert
The hypertension drug rilmenidine has been shown to slow down aging in worms, an effect that in humans could hypothetically help us live longer and keep us healthier in our latter years.
Rilmenidine was picked for this latest study because past research has shown it mimics the effects of caloric restriction on a cellular level. Reducing available energy while maintaining nutrition within the body has been shown to extend lifespans in several animal models.
Whether this translates to human biology, or is a potential risk to our health, is a topic of ongoing debate. Finding ways to achieve the same benefits without the costs of extreme calorie cutting could lead to new ways to improve health in old age.
In a series of tests conducted by an international team of researchers, young and old Caenorhabditis elegans worms treated with the drug – which is normally used to treat high blood pressure – lived longer and presented higher measures in a variety of health markers in the same way as restricting calories, as the scientists had hoped.
“For the first time, we have been able to show in animals that rilmenidine can increase lifespan,” says molecular biogerontologist João Pedro Magalhães, from the University of Birmingham in the UK. “We are now keen to explore if rilmenidine may have other clinical applications.”
The C. elegans worm is a favorite for studies, because many of its genes have similarities to counterparts in our genome. Yet in spite of these similarities, it is still a rather distant relation to humans.
Further tests showed that gene activity associated with caloric restriction could be seen in the kidney and liver tissues of mice treated with rilmenidine. In other words, some of the changes that caloric restriction gives in animals and thought to confer certain health benefits also appear with a hypertension drug that many people already take.
Another discovery was that a biological signaling receptor called nish-1 was crucial in the effectiveness of rilmenidine. This particular chemical structure could be targeted in future attempts to improve lifespan and slow down aging.
“We found that the lifespan-extending effects of rilmenidine were abolished when nish-1 was deleted,” write the researchers in their published paper. “Critically, rescuing the nish-1 receptor reinstated the increase in lifespan upon treatment with rilmenidine.”
Low-calorie diets are hard to follow and come with a variety of side effects, such as hair thinning, dizziness, and brittle bones. It’s early days still, but the thinking is that this hypertension drug could confer the same benefits as a low-calorie diet while being easier on the body.
What makes rilmenidine a promising candidate as an anti-aging drug is that it can be taken orally, it’s already widely prescribed, and its side effects are rare and relatively mild (they include palpitations, insomnia and drowsiness in a few cases).
There’s a long way to go yet in figuring out if rilmenidine would work as an anti-aging drug for actual humans, but the early signs in these worm and mice tests are promising. We now know much more about what rilmenidine can do, and how it operates.
“With a global aging population, the benefits of delaying aging, even if slightly, are immense,” says Magalhães.
The research has been published in Aging Cell.
Rays Extend Jeffrey Springs – MLB Trade Rumors
The Rays announced that they have signed left-hander Jeffrey Springs to a four-year contract extension. The southpaw will be guaranteed $31MM over the course of the deal but there’s also incentives and a $15MM club option for 2027 with a $750K buyout. If Springs hits all the incentives and Cy Young award escalators and the club picks up the option, he’ll earn $65.75MM over five years. The exact details of those incentives and escalators aren’t known. He will earn a salary of $4MM this year, $5.25MM next year, followed by $10.5MM in each of the following two seasons. Springs was set to reach free agency after 2024, so this could allow the Rays to secure him for three additional seasons, if they end up triggering that option.
Springs, 30, has had a unique baseball journey. A 30th round draft pick of the Rangers, he drew little fanfare from prospect evaluators in his first few professional seasons. Though he got some rotation work for a few years, the Rangers used him exclusively in relief in 2018 to good results. He tossed 56 2/3 innings between Double-A and Triple-A that year. The 4.13 ERA might not seem very impressive, but it was surely inflated by a .438 batting average on balls in play. He kept his walks down to a reasonable 8.1% level while striking out an incredible 41.7% of batters faced. He got to make his MLB debut that year, throwing 32 innings over 18 appearances with a 3.38 ERA.
He took a step back in 2019, missing a few months with left biceps tendinitis and posting a 6.40 ERA. Texas designated him for assignment going into 2020 and then traded him to the Red Sox for Sam Travis. The change of scenery didn’t help Springs get back on track, as he posted a 7.08 ERA in the shortened 2020 campaign. He was designated for assignment again and then flipped to the Rays alongside Chris Mazza for prospects Ronaldo Hernández and Nick Sogard.
The move to Tampa appears to have been the one Springs needed, as his results have completely turned around since then. He registered a 3.43 ERA over 43 appearances in 2021, striking out 35.2% of batters faced while walking just 7.8% of them. In 2022, he started in the bullpen but the club began stretching him into a starter as the season went along. He responded well to the change, eventually throwing 135 1/3 innings with a 2.46 ERA, 26.2% strikeout rate, 5.6% walk rate and 40.9% ground ball rate.
After a few years of floundering and struggling, it’s not a huge surprise that Springs would jump at the chance to lock in some life-changing money here. He reached arbitration for the first time going into 2022 but only made $947.5K, a slight bump over the $700K league minimum. He was projected by MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz for a jump to $3MM this year, though he and the club didn’t come to an agreement prior to the filing deadline earlier this month. He submitted a $3.55MM figure while the Rays filed at $2.7MM. Instead, he’ll make $4MM and lock in some eight-figure salaries for the future.
For the Rays, they clearly believe Springs is capable of continuing as an effective starter, though there’s some risk here. Springs had excellent results in 2022 but it’s still just one season, and it wasn’t even a full one. As mentioned, Springs began the year in the bullpen and wasn’t stretched out until the end of May. He also went on the injured list for a couple of weeks in July due to right lower leg tightness. Concerns aside, the Rays are confident enough in the lefty that they’re willing to take a gamble on him.
For a low-spending team like the Rays, extensions are an important part of having talent on the roster. Since they don’t usually shop at the top of the free agent market, they need to keep guys around by locking them up before they get closer to the open market and increase their earning power. In recent years, they’ve given extensions to players like Kevin Kiermaier, Blake Snell, Brandon Lowe, Wander Franco, Manuel Margot and Tyler Glasnow, with Springs now joining them on that list.
This won’t have a huge impact on the club’s 2023 payroll but will add some decent commitments to 2025 and 2026. The club now has three players locked into the former season with Franco and Zach Eflin on the books there, along with a club option for Lowe. In exchange for putting that money on the table, the Rays now have arguably the most rotation stability they’ve had in years. Recent seasons have seen them rely on bullpen games and openers to get through a season but they now have Springs, Glasnow, Eflin, Drew Rasmussen and Shane McClanahan, with depth options like Yonny Chirinos, Luis Patiño and Josh Fleming. Most of that group are still in their pre-arbitration years, giving the club years of affordable control. None of them are slated for free agency after this year and Glasnow is now the only one set to hit the open market after 2024. The club also has one of the top pitching prospects in the sport in Taj Bradley, who finished last year at Triple-A and could make his debut this year.
Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times first reported the four-year first reported the deal and many of the details. Joel Sherman of the New York Post was the first with the year-to-year salary breakdown.
Image Courtesy of USA Today Sports.
4 healthy diets that could extend your life: study
You can reduce the risk of an early death by nearly 20%, just by eating more foods from four healthy eating patterns, according to researchers who analyzed decades of data collected on more than 119,000 adults.
The study, published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine, found that people who ate the “highest-quality diets” had 20% lower risk of dying early from cancer, cardiovascular illness, and respiratory and neurodegenerative diseases during the study.
Notably, the researchers found the link between the healthy eaters and lower risk of death held up across different racial and ethnic groups, including Hispanic, non-Hispanic Black and non-Hispanic White individuals.
POTATOES AREN’T ALWAYS BAD FOR YOU — IT’S ALL IN THE PREPARATION, NEW STUDY INDICATES
The “highest-quality diets” included the four dietary pattern indexes (Healthy Eating Index 2015, Alternate Mediterranean Diet, Healthful Plant-based Diet Index, and Alternate Healthy Eating Index).
The new study, published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine, found that people who ate the “highest-quality diets” had 20% lower risk of dying early from certain illnesses.
(iStock)
All share key components including whole grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts and legumes, although other components differ across different eating patterns.
“Our findings support the recommendations of DGAs [Dietary Guidelines for Americans] for multiple healthy eating patterns for all US individuals with diverse cultural and personal food traditions and preferences,” concluded corresponding author Frank B. Hu, M.D., of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts.
Various legumes and colorful beans — top view. All participants were free of cardiovascular disease or cancer at the beginning of the study.
(iStock)
The researchers used health data collected over 36 years from two long term studies. The first examined 75,230 women from the Nurses’ Health Study (1984-2020) and the second examined 44,085 men from the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study (1986-2020).
All participants were free of cardiovascular disease or cancer at the beginning of the study.
Among both study groups, food-frequency questionnaires were completed every four years (starting in 1984 for the NHS and in 1986 for the HPFS), allowing the researchers to determine how closely 75,230 women and 44,085 men in the two studies adhered to one of four healthy eating patterns: the Healthy Eating Index 2015 (HEI-2015), Alternate Mediterranean Diet (AMED) score, Healthful Plant-Based Diet Index (HPDI) and Alternate Healthy Eating Index (AHEI).
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR OUR HEALTH NEWSLETTER
The researcher scored participants on how closely they followed four healthy eating styles that are in sync with current U.S. dietary guidelines and used the participants eventually death records to determine any association with eating patterns.
People often get bored with one way of eating, Hu explained, “so this is good news. It means that we have a lot of flexibility in terms of creating our own healthy dietary patterns that can be tailored to individual food preferences, health conditions and cultures.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
“For example, if you are eating healthy Mediterranean, and after a few months you want to try something different, you can switch to a DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) diet, or you can switch to a semi-vegetarian diet,” Hu said.
“Or you can follow U.S. dietary guidelines and create your own healthy eating plate.”
The findings were published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.
Tesla shares extend losses on demand worries in China
Dec 27 (Reuters) – Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) shares fell 11.4% on Tuesday after a Reuters report that Tesla was planning to run a reduced production schedule in January at its Shanghai plant sparked worries of a drop in demand in the world’s biggest car market.
The stock, which fell to its lowest in more than two years and had its worst day in eight months, was the biggest drag on the benchmark S&P 500 index (.SPX) and the tech-heavy Nasdaq index (.IXIC).
It has lost more than half its value since the start of October as investors worry that Twitter was taking much of Chief Executive Elon Musk’s time while fretting about his stake sale in the electric-car maker.
The world’s most valuable automaker’s production cuts at the Shanghai plant come amid a rising number of COVID-19 infections in the country.
“There’s no question there are demand fears,” Great Hill Capital Chairman Thomas Hayes said, citing a delivery forecast cut from Chinese rival Nio Inc (9866.HK), in the key market.
Hayes also added that Tesla’s stock was facing a “perfect storm” of high-interest rates, tax loss selling and share sales by some funds that hold a significant amount of Tesla stock.
Tax loss selling is when an investor sells an asset at a capital loss to lower or eliminate the capital gain realized by other investments, for income tax purposes.
Meanwhile, a Reuters analysis showed that prices of used Tesla cars were falling faster than those of other carmakers, weighing on demand for the company’s new vehicles rolling off the assembly line.
(This story has been refiled to correct the syntax in paragraph 1)
Reporting by Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D’Silva
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Stock futures slide after major averages extend losses to start the week
Andrew Burton | Getty Images
Stock futures fell Tuesday morning, reversing directions after the Bank of Japan announced to widen its yield target range.
Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 236 points, or 0.72%. S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq 100 futures fell 0.86% and 1.05%, respectively.
During regular trading on Monday, the Dow shed more than 162 points, or about 0.5%. The S&P 500 fell 0.9%, and the Nasdaq Composite lost nearly 1.5%. Stocks are on track to end the month and the year in the red, and investors’ hopes for a Santa Claus rally are fading fast.
“There’s still no Santa sighting. Buckle up,” said Louis Navellier, founder of growth investing firm Navellier & Associates. “One would like to think all the bad news is in. There are no more Fed moves until February at the earliest. We’re not gapping down but certainly not clawing back last week’s losses.”
Fears that the Federal Reserve could tip the economy into a recession plagued investors. Last week, the central bank raised its benchmark interest rate by 50 basis points and policymakers indicated the terminal rate could rise as high as 5.1%.
Other central banks in hawkish mode put further pressure on traders, with the European Central Bank raising rates and its outlook for further hikes last week.
“Over 90% of central banks have hiked interest rates this year, making the (mostly) global coordinated effort unprecedented” said Lawrence Gillum, fixed income strategist at LPL Financial. “The good news? We think we’re close to the end of these rate hiking cycles, which could lessen the headwind we’ve seen on global financial markets this year.”
A handful of big companies will report their quarterly results this week ahead of the Christmas holiday. General Mills will report before the bell Tuesday. Nike and FedEx are set to report after the bell.
In economic data, housing starts data for November are due Tuesday morning. This week promises lots of insight into the housing industry. Sales data for existing homes and new homes will be released Wednesday and Friday, respectively.
November’s personal consumption expenditures report, a preferred measure of inflation for the Fed, is due on Friday.
Oil removal effort for Keystone pipeline spill to extend to next week, U.S. EPA says
Dec 9 (Reuters) – The effort to remove oil from the largest crude spill in the United States in nearly a decade will extend into next week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said on Friday, making it likely that the Keystone pipeline shutdown will last for several more days.
TC Energy (TRP.TO) shut the largest oil pipeline to the United States from Canada on Wednesday after it leaked 14,000 barrels of oil into a Kansas creek. It said on Friday it is still determining when it will be able to return the line to service.
The outage on the Keystone, which carries 622,000 barrels of Canadian crude per day (bpd) to various parts of the United States, could affect inventories at the key Cushing, Oklahoma, storage hub and cut crude supplies to two oil refining centers, analysts said. Crews in Kansas continued clean-up efforts on Friday from the breach, the cause of which remained unknown.
“We’re beginning to get a better sense of the clean up efforts that will need to be undertaken in the longer-term,” said Kellen Ashford, spokesperson for the EPA Region 7, which includes Kansas.
TC Energy aims to restart on Saturday a pipeline segment that sends oil to Illinois, and another portion that brings oil to Cushing on Dec. 20, Bloomberg News reported, citing sources. Reuters has not verified those details.
This is the third spill of several thousand barrels of crude on the pipeline since it first opened in 2010. A previous Keystone spill had caused the pipeline to remain shut for about two weeks.
TC Energy remained on site with around 100 workers leading the clean-up and containment efforts, and the EPA was providing oversight and monitoring, Ashford said. TC is responsible for determining the cause of the leak.
A corrective action order from the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Administration (PHMSA) to TC on Thursday said the company shut the pipeline down seven minutes after receiving a leak detection alarm. The affected segment, 36 inches (91 cm) in diameter, was Keystone’s Phase 2 extension to Cushing built in 2011.
Washington County, a rural area of about 5,500 people, is about 200 miles (320 km) northwest of Kansas City.
The oil spill has not threatened the local water supply or forced local residents to evacuate, Washington County Emergency Management Coordinator Randy Hubbard told Reuters. Workers quickly set up a containment area to restrict oil that had spilled into a creek from flowing downstream.
“There is no human consumption drinking water that would come out of this,” Hubbard said.
Livestock producers in the area have been notified and have taken their own corrective measure to protect their animals, he added.
The EPA is the main federal agency that oversees inland oil spills. If the EPA finds TC Energy liable for the spill, the company would be responsible for the cost of cleanup and repairing any harm to the environment, as well as potential civil and criminal penalties.
Pipeline operators are typically held accountable for breaches by the EPA through the Clean Water Act (CWA) and the related Oil Pollution Act, among others, according to Zygmunt Plater, an environmental law professor at Boston College Law School.
Those federal acts restrict the discharge of pollutants such as oil into waterways and hold pipeline operators responsible for the costs associated with containment, cleanup and damages from spills.
CRUDE BOTTLENECK
A lengthy shutdown of the pipeline could also lead to Canadian crude getting bottlenecked in Alberta, and drive prices at the Hardisty storage hub lower, although price reaction on Friday was muted.
Western Canada Select (WCS), the benchmark Canadian heavy grade, for December delivery last traded at a discount of $27.70 per barrel to the U.S crude futures benchmark, according to a Calgary-based broker. On Thursday, December WCS traded as low as $33.50 under U.S. crude, before settling at around a $28.45 discount.
PHMSA has to approve the restart of the line. Even once the pipeline starts operating again, the affected area will have to flow at reduced rates pending PHMSA approval.
“The real impact could come if Keystone faces any pressure restrictions from PHMSA, even after the pipeline is allowed to resume operations,” said Ryan Saxton, head of oil data at Wood Mackenzie.
Additional reporting by Arathy Somasekhar, Rod Nickel, Stephanie Kelly and Clark Mindock; Editing by Marguerita Choy
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.