The largest crude oil pipeline exiting the Permian Basin by volume — Wink to Webster (W2W) —was offline for planned maintenance during the first 10 days of June to reroute a small section of the line, according to the latest monthly data from the Texas Railroad Commission. This maintenance led to a substantial month-on-month drop in volumes on the 1.5 MMb/d pipeline, with flows decreasing by 504 Mb/d to a total of 908 Mb/d in June (see total stacked area on the chart below).
Volumes on Midland-to-ECHO 3 (M2E 3, purple stacked area), which represents Enterprise’s 29% undivided joint interest in W2W, totaled 300 Mb/d in June — 150 Mb/d lower than in May, marking the first decline after six consecutive months of full utilization. Receipts from ExxonMobil at Wink were zero, while most other W2W receipt points at Wink and Midland experienced an approximately 32% drop in monthly volumes.
This downtime event contributed to the Midland/Houston spread widening to as much as $1.40/bbl. Interruption like this signal where the spread may be heading, as available pipeline capacity from the Permian Basin to the desired markets on the U.S. Gulf Coast continues to tighten. Over the past 30 trade days, the daily spread has widened to as much as $1.17/bbl.
