Permian Basin crude oil flows to Houston showed signs of recovery in July 2024, rebounding from the sharp decline in June that marked the lowest volumes since September 2023 (see blue line on the chart below), according to the latest monthly data from the Texas Railroad Commission. The dip in June was due to planned 10-day maintenance on the Wink-to-Webster (W2W) Pipeline. Volumes rose to 2.31 MMb/d, an increase of 153 Mb/d from June, though still below the 2.55 MMb/d recorded during the first five months of 2024.
With pipelines to Corpus Christi operating near full capacity, Houston has absorbed much of the recent growth in Permian production. However, this trend was interrupted in June when W2W went offline for planned maintenance to reroute a small segment of the line. Currently, four pipelines serve as routes for Permian crude bound for Houston — Midland-to-ECHO 1 (M2E1 620 Mb/d), W2W (1.5 MMb/d, of which Midland-to-ECHO III makes up 450 Mb/d representing Enterprise’s undivided interest), Longhorn (275 Mb/d) and BridgeTex (440 Mb/d). With W2W’s return to being fully operational, July resulted in a volume increase of 322 Mb/d to 1.2 MMb/d, though this remains below recent levels. ONEOK’s BridgeTex, which captured an additional 93 Mb/d in June while W2W’s utilization was down, experienced a decline of 86 Mb/d in July, bringing volumes to 308 Mb/d. Longhorn and M2E1 saw smaller month-on-month declines of 30 Mb/d and 54 Mb/d, respectively, as both pipelines were already operating near full capacity prior to June. While July saw a partial recovery, further restoration of volumes to Houston was expected in August.
