It's been almost a year since the co-owners of the massive Capline crude oil pipeline initiated southbound service between Patoka, IL, and St. James, LA, on what for a half-century had been a northbound conduit. How’s it working out? So far, so good, it seems. As expected, for the first several months the volumes of heavy Canadian crude oil flowing down the 632-mile, 40-inch-diameter pipeline to the St. James hub were modest. Since June, however, Capline has been offering a temporary incentive rate to attract more heavy oil, and starting December 1 it’s also been offering a temporary buck-a-barrel rate for light oil too. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss the latest Capline developments, the challenges associated with batching heavy and light crude on such a big pipe, and the prospects for much higher flows.
As we said a year and a half ago in our four-part Part of the Plan blog series on the then-impending Capline reversal, the pipeline was a gamechanger when it first became operational in August 1968 in that it enabled large volumes of imported oil and offshore Gulf of Mexico (GOM) production to be transported north to a slew of refineries in the Midwest. The northbound pipeline’s capacity (which ramped up to 1.2 MMb/d by the mid-1980s) was highly utilized for many years, but by the early 2010s the Midwest refineries connected to the Patoka hub had gained access to the increasing volumes of crude available from Western Canada and the Bakken. As a result, they simply didn’t need Capline’s northbound flows as much as they used to, and volumes on the pipe slowed to less than half, then less than a third and finally just a sliver of its capacity before northbound ceased in late 2018.
Finally, in August 2019, Capline’s co-owners — Plains All American (with a ~54% ownership interest), Marathon Petroleum Corp. (MPC; ~33%) and BP (~13%) — announced that they had sanctioned the Capline reversal project, with plans to feed crude into the pipeline at two primary points: the Patoka hub and in northern Mississippi, the latter at a proposed interconnection between Capline and an extension of Plains and Valero Energy’s Diamond Pipeline from Cushing, OK, to Memphis. Plans for the Diamond extension from Memphis to the Capline interconnect fell through, though, leaving Capline to focus (at least initially) on flowing only heavy oil south from Patoka.
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About the song
“Southbound” was written by Carrie Underwood, David Garcia and Josh Miller and appears as the fifth song on Carrie Underwood’s sixth studio album, Cry Pretty. Released as the third single from the album in April 2019, it went to #3 on the Billboard Country Airplay chart, #11 on the Hot Country Songs chart, and #64 on the Hot 100 Singles chart. It has been certified Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Underwood first performed the song live at the 54th Academy of Country Music awards in April 2019. She released a video of the song featuring behind-the-scenes tour footage and a party with friends and family at a dock on Lake Travis in Austin, TX.
Cry Pretty was recorded in 2017-18 at Dark Horse Recording, The Library and Oak Hollow in Nashville, Velvet Basement in Miami, and The Ludaplex in Atlanta. It marked the first co-produced effort by Underwood, who partnered with David Garcia and Jim Jonsin on the album. Released in September 2018, the album went to #1 on both the Billboard 200 Albums chart and the Top Country Albums chart. It has been certified Platinum by the RIAA. Four singles were released from the LP.
Carrie Underwood is an American country music singer and songwriter. The Oklahoma native rose to prominence after winning American Idol in 2005. Her single, “Inside Your Heaven” made her the only solo country artist to have a single debut at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles chart. She has released nine studio albums, one compilation album and 29 singles and has sold over 70 million records worldwide. Underwood has won 16 ACM Awards, 17 American Music Awards, 12 Billboard Music Awards, 16 BMI Awards, nine CMA Awards and eight Grammy Awards and is a member of the Oklahoma Hall of Fame and Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame. She continues to record and is currently on the road with her Denim & Rhinestones Tour.
