Crude exports for the week ending 12 Jan fell to 2.7 MMb/d, a drop of nearly 1.5 MMb/d compared to the first week of the year, and the lowest level in the last 12 months, except for one week in June. Loadings have tended to be lower the first week or two of the year for the past few years, compared to the rest of the year, but rarely have they been essentially the lowest. Though lower than the blistering pace of an average of 3.8 MMb/d set in 2023 and nearly 4 MMb/d for the last few weeks of the year, it is not out of line with the previous years' averages, and with 11 VLCCs entering the Gulf this week and many smaller vessels loaded but riding at anchor (presaging reverse lightering), this also promises to be a transient effect.
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- Analyst Insight
Gulf Coast Terminals Load Lowest Volume of Crude in 15 Months
Crude oil shipments across the U.S. Gulf Coast fell by a steep 1.2 MMb/d to 2.5 MMb/d for the week ended June 9 — the lowest in nearly 15 months.
- Blog
One Week - A Record Seven Days for Gulf Coast Crude Exports, and a Lot More
The level of activity at crude oil export terminals from Corpus Christi to the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (LOOP) is nothing short of extraordinary — a record 4.8 MMb/d was loaded the week ended August 25, according to RBN’s Crude Voyager report, and Houston-area terminals loaded an all-time high of 1.4 MMb/d. But there’s a lot more to the crude exports story. When you live this stuff day-in, day-out, you see subtle changes that often extend into trends and, if you’re lucky, you sometimes get signals that things you’d been predicting are actually happening. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss highlights from the latest Crude Voyager and what the weekly report’s data and analysis reveal about the global oil market.
- Blog
Deep Water - Contenders in the Race to Build Crude Oil Export Terminals Off the Texas Coast
As Gulf Coast marine terminal owners consider ways to at least partially load Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs) at their facilities, a handful of midstream companies also are planning offshore terminals in deep water that would allow the full loading of VLCCs via pipeline. Projects under development by Oiltanking and others for sites along the Texas coast would appear to have at least two legs up on the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, or LOOP. For one, they’d have more direct access to the Permian, Eagle Ford and other crudes flowing to coastal Texas. For another, the new terminals would be focused on crude exports — no double-duty for them. Today, we begin a review of the projects vying to be the first LOOP-like project in the deep waters off the Lone Star State.
