Crude oil demand may be on the rise again, but Canadian National Railway Co.’s new leader insists energy shipments won’t displace longtime railroad staples such as grain and lumber.
Bloomberg reports grain farmers in the western Prairie provinces of saw exports slow to a crawl when Canadian National proved unable to cope with a surge in demand starting in the second half of last year.
In March, with bottlenecks and customer complaints mounting, Canada’s biggest railroad ousted then-Chief Executive Officer Luc Jobin -- prompting his successor, Jean-Jacques Ruest, to boost capital spending to a record C$3.5 billion ($2.7 billion) to start fixing the logjams.
"To the extent we have some spare capacity, which is what we are building here, to onboard crude without hurting grain, lumber and mining, then we will do that," Ruest told Bloomberg.
