Yep, there are different grades of crude (referred to as light vs heavy and sweet vs sour). Alberta tar sands crude is in the heavy/sour range. The differences

Yep, there are different grades of crude (referred to as light vs heavy and sweet vs sour). Alberta tar sands crude is in the heavy/sour range. The differences in the grades of oil require different tooling to process and may be more or less expensive to process. West Texas fracking crude by contrast is light and sweet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_crude_oil?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_crude_oil?wprov=sfti1 As to why people don’t store it.. well, we (as a nation, and also the oil industry) try to but it’s only possible to store limited amounts of liquids (notoriously because liquids are incompressible), especially when you’re talking about thousands to millions of barrels per day. Estimates are that oil demand has dropped by 30% globally, the OPEC+ meeting last week showed us a ~10% global cut by Saudi Arabia/Russia/US... which still leaves a meaty 20% surplus. A lot of the recent contention has been around when all the (strategic) reserve tanks will fill up and cause the price to really plummet... which we’re seeing now.