RBN Energy

Rapid change in the Gulf Coast crude supply picture is encouraging new infrastructure investment by crude and feedstock terminal companies anxious to capitalize from increased throughput volumes. A 3 MMb/d influx of new crude from pipelines in Texas and the Midwest over the next two years could easily end up causing indigestion at Houston refineries and that means opportunity for storage and blending operators. Today we continue our survey of Gulf Coast crude terminals by looking at Oiltanking Houston.

In Part 1 of the series (see Echo and the Blending Men) we looked at the new 6 MMBbl Enterprise ECHO crude terminal being touted as a delivery point if the NYMEX list a Houston crude futures contract. In Part 2 (see Nederland Crude Wonderland) we looked at the Energy Transfer Partners/Sunoco Logistics Nederland Terminal at Port Neches on the Texas/Louisiana border between Beaumont and Port Arthur 100 miles East of Houston. That terminal has been in place since the beginning of the twentieth century and now has 22 MMBbl of storage capacity.

Oiltanking Houston

This time we turn our attention to the Oiltanking Houston (OTH) Terminal on the Houston Ship Channel east of downtown Houston. The Ship Channel is the conduit for ocean going vessels between the Port of Houston, Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. One of the largest refinery and petrochemical complexes in the world runs along the Ship Channel. Don’t book a vacation there. We found a satellite map of the Ship Channel that includes the names of many of the plant facilities and terminals and we have attached a copy of it at the end of the blog (scroll down to the bottom of the page – if the download doesn’t work for you, let us know at info@rbnenergy.com and we will email a copy). We reproduce a smaller version of the map below with the OTH terminal marked with a black arrow. You can see that Oiltanking are right in the thick of the action.

The surging production of condensate, or ultra-light crude oil, from America’s new shale-oil plays presents an opportunity that’s only just beginning to be recognized by much of the hydrocarbon market.  Historically U.S. condensates have been a tiny sliver of that market, usually blended into crude. Now there is just too much of the stuff, particularly in places that aren’t yet ready to process it in large quantities. In this next installment of Fifty Shades of Condensates we explore the constrained domestic demand for “raw” condensates at U.S. Gulf refineries and petrochemical plants, and the promising international outlets for condensate in Canada and Asia. Bottom line: unless the unlikely happens and the U.S. lifts restrictions on exporting “raw” condensate, producers, traders and other players will either be selling it here at a discount, or spending money to transform it to buy a little optionality. It’s all about spending the least they can to access pockets of demand, and first movers are already enjoying an advantage.

The Ho-Ho reversal project coming online in early 2013 provides an important link between the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast markets. Ho-Ho should help to distribute 3 MMb/d of crude supplies arriving over the next two years in the Houston area to refineries throughout the region. All this new pipeline capacity is designed to end the Midwest supply glut. Today we discover how the new supply capacity could initially cause more problems than it solves.