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The discount on Western Canada Select to North American benchmark West Texas Intermediate futures widened on Wednesday.
WCS for October delivery in Hardisty, Alberta, settled at $11.30 a barrel under the U.S. benchmark WTI, according to brokerage CalRock, compared with $11.20 a barrel discount on Tuesday.
* WCS discounts are not expected to be as narrow in the second half of the year as they were this spring. Western Canadian crude production continues to grow, with the oil-producing province of Alberta hitting a new record of 4.3 million barrels per day in July.
* U.S. imports of Venezuelan heavy crude also resumed in late August, a factor that weighs on demand for Canadian heavy barrels.
* Market expectations that OPEC+ will gradually unwind additional barrels of previously announced voluntary production cuts over the next 12 months are also a net negative for WCS prices, said Enverus analyst Michael Berger.
* Global oil prices settled higher on Wednesday by more than $1 a barrel as investors worried about possible supply disruptions after Poland downed drones in its airspace and the U.S. pushed for new sanctions on buyers of Russian oil the day after an Israeli attack in Qatar.
(Reporting by Amanda Stephenson in Calgary; Editing by Richard Chang)
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