Cenovus sidesteps pipeline shortage

Article Excerpt

CENOVUS ENERGY INC. $32 (Toronto symbol CVE; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Resources sector; Shares outstanding: 755.6 million; Market cap: $24.2 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 1.4; Dividend yield: 3.0%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.cenovus.com) plans to ship more of the heavy bitumen from its Alberta oil sands projects by rail, in response to a lack of pipeline capacity and uncertainty over the Keystone XL project (see page 71). By the end of 2013, the company expects to ship 10,000 barrels a day by rail, mostly lighter oil from its properties in Saskatchewan. It aims to boost that total to 30,000 barrels a day by the end of 2014. That’s equal to 17% of Cenovus’s current daily output of 180,000 barrels. The company has leased 800 railcars to support this expansion. Cenovus is a buy. buy…