Hi Ludwig,

I don`t think there is a problem at Cushing. Cushing is doing just fine. With all new drilling technologies exploding in last few years most of our oil storages are full or almost full. The same thing with the natural gas. First time in decades North American Oil production is growing in very nice phase.

I suggest that we should distinguish between the Paper OIL and Crude Oil. All speculation is taking place with Paper Oil. About 3 billion barrels of OIL Paper Contracts are traded every day. The actual consumption of OIl is about 80 million barrels per day. One barrel of crude oil is flipped 37 times per day by traders.

Bitumen is a totally different story. There is no future market for it. The current problems are the freak coincidence in the pipeline and upgrading capacity.

The latest news (from the Penn West Petroleum Feb 17 report) suggest that they do not expect the pipeline "rationing issues to be resolved before the end of the current quarter".