Cushing Crude Oil Inventories Fall for 12th Time in 13 Weeks

The famous Field of Dreams misquote “If you build it, they will come” certainly has proved true for the midstream companies that added a record 18.7 MMbbl of crude oil storage capacity in PADD 2 in late 2015 and early 2016. During that six-month period, crude inventories in PADD 2 blasted 24.4 MMbbl higher to a record 155.6 MMbbl. And while PADD 2 oil stockpiles have been shrinking somewhat in recent weeks, they remain above 150 MMbbl—a mark the PADD had never seen before this year. Storage levels have been particularly high at the Cushing, OK storage and distribution hub within PADD 2. Why is so much crude being socked away?  Today, we continue our look at the new storage capacity being added in the U.S., and at why demand for storage has been so high.

The world is in desperate need of more crude oil right now and anybody with barrels is scouring every nook and cranny for any additional volume that can be brought to market. Some of that may come from increased production, but the oil patch is a long-cycle industry, just coming off one of the most severe bust periods ever, and it will take time to get all the various national oil companies, majors, and independents rowing in the same direction again. For now, part of the answer will be to drain what we can from storage — after all, a major purpose of storing crude inventories is to serve as a shock absorber for short-term market disruptions. To that end, the U.S. is coordinating with other nations to release strategic reserve volumes to help stymie the global impact of avoiding Russian commodities. Outside of reserves held for strategic purposes though, commercial inventories have already been dwindling as escalating global crude prices have been signaling the market to sell as much as possible. Stored volumes at Cushing — the U.S.’s largest commercial tank farm and home to the pricing benchmark WTI — have been freefalling for months, which raises the question, how much more (if any) can come out of Cushing? In today’s RBN blog, we update one of our Greatest Hits blogs to calculate how much crude oil is actually available at Cushing.

The global economic shut-down caused by COVID continues to wreak havoc on U.S. markets. Last week, the dynamics that resulted in negative prices for NYMEX WTI thrust crude oil, and, more specifically, storage at Cushing, OK, into the national spotlight. The extraordinary imbalance in U.S. crude oil supply and demand has been pushing record volumes of oil into storage at the Cushing crude hub and tankage along the Gulf Coast. The same fundamental factors have also driven a surge in stocks of refined products like gasoline and diesel. Now the questions on everybody’s mind are, how long until storage tanks are completely full and what will that mean? Today, we’ll discuss recent trends and consider what record storage builds mean for the oil patch.