Capline

We’ve reached the two-year anniversary of the reversal of the joint-venture Capline crude oil pipeline. With its current north-to-south flow, it adds to the few conduits that can move oil from the Midwest to the Gulf Coast, specifically the St. James, LA, oil hub. Flows have been on a steady climb since southbound service began in December 2021, but volumes appear to be short of its available capacity, and there are looming headwinds. In today’s RBN blog, we examine whether Capline’s flows could be affected by the impending startup of the Canadian government-owned Trans Mountain Expansion Project (TMX). Could rising Alberta production be its golden ticket?  

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.

For some time now, a handful of refineries in southeastern Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama have been able to receive steeply discounted, heavy sour crude from Western Canada by rail or barge — or, in rare cases, by pipeline from Cushing to Nederland, TX, to the St. James, LA, hub. Starting in a few months, though, this same crude also will be able to flow by pipe directly from Patoka, IL, to St. James on the soon-to-be-reversed Capline pipeline. Initially, the southbound volumes on Capline will be modest, but over time they could increase to several hundred thousand barrels a day. Will those barrels be loaded onto supertankers and shipped overseas, or will they be headed for refineries in Louisiana and its eastern neighbors? In today’s blog, we try to answer those questions.

In just a few months, heavy crude from Western Canada will start flowing south on the Capline pipeline from the Patoka, IL, hub to the one at St. James, LA. While the initial volumes will be modest, Capline’s long-awaited reversal will provide Louisiana refineries and export terminals with easier, lower-cost access to oil sands and other Alberta production. Flipping the pipeline’s direction of flow also means more changes for the St. James storage and distribution hub — one of the U.S.’s largest — which has already seen more than its share of evolution during the Shale Era. Today, we continue our Capline/St. James blog series with a look at St. James’s terminals and pipelines, the Louisiana refineries they supply, and the changes coming with the Capline reversal.

It’s been a mantra in the energy industry for a few years now: more Canadian and Lower-48 crude oil needs to move to the Gulf Coast, with its bounty of refineries and export docks. And that’s been happening, thanks to a slew of new and expanded pipelines and new tankage. Similarly, new export capacity has been developed, and a number of refineries in Texas and Louisiana revised their crude slates to take advantage of what looked like an ever-rising supply of North American crude. Yet another piece of the puzzle will slide into place in January 2022, when crude oil — most of it heavy Western Canadian — will start flowing south on the newly reversed, large-bore Capline pipeline from the Patoka hub in Illinois to the impressive collection of terminals in St. James, LA. Today, we continue our series on the market impacts of Capline’s upcoming reversal on St. James, Louisiana refineries and crude exports.

Over the next few months, a variety of market players — crude oil producers, midstreamers, refiners, and exporters — will be making preparations for one of the most anticipated infrastructure additions in recent years. Actually, it’s not technically new; it’s the long-planned reversal of the 632-mile, 40-inch-diameter Capline, which for a half-century transported crude north from St. James, LA, to Patoka, IL. Line-filling will begin this fall and Capline will start flowing south from Patoka in January 2022, providing Western Canadian and other producers with new pipeline access to Gulf Coast markets. Upstream of Patoka, the impending reversal has been spurring the development of new pipeline capacity to supply the soon-to-be-southbound Capline, and in Louisiana, refiners and exporters have been making plans for the crude that will be flowing their way into St. James. Today, we discuss the broad impacts of the “new” Patoka-to-St.-James pipeline.

The crude oil hub in Patoka, IL, is in many ways a smaller version of the hub in Cushing, OK. Like its larger sibling, Patoka receives a broad variety of crudes from Western Canada, the Bakken, and other production areas, stores and blends oil, and sends it out to refineries and Gulf Coast terminals tied to export docks. In Patoka’s case, there are only five major incoming pipelines that directly connect to the hub, but many of them receive crude from a number of upstream systems, some as far away as the Alberta oil sands. Important for Patoka’s future, a few of the pipelines feeding the hub are being expanded. Today, we continue our series on the second-largest oil hub in PADD 2 with a look at the pipelines that flow into Patoka and the sourcing of their crude.

The crude oil hub in Cushing, OK, is larger and grabs the headlines, but don’t you forget about the Patoka hub in south-central Illinois. It plays critically important roles in receiving Western Canadian, Bakken, and other crude, distributing it to a slew of Midwestern refineries, and directing oil south to the Gulf Coast on the Energy Transfer Crude Oil Pipeline to Nederland, TX — and soon on Capline to St. James, LA, when reversed flows on that large-bore pipe begin in early 2022. Better still, there are great stories behind the development of the Patoka storage and distribution hub and how it works. Today, we begin a series on the second-largest crude oil hub in PADD 2 and why, with the upcoming Capline reversal and other changes, the hub is more relevant than ever.

U.S. crude oil imported from Western Canada averaged almost 3.6 MMb/d in the first 10 months of 2020 and accounted for 60% of total imports over the period. That’s some growth! Ten years ago, Canada was sending less than 2 MMb/d south and contributing only 21% of total U.S, import volumes. Alberta oil sands producers are planning for more production and export growth through the 2020s, with most of the incremental volumes bound for Midwest and Gulf Coast refineries and export docks. If that happens — and there’s no certainty it will — more north-to-south pipeline capacity through the U.S. heartland will be needed. Today, we continue our series on the efforts to expand or reverse crude oil pipelines between the U.S./Canada border and the Gulf of Mexico.

The province of Alberta has lifted its cap on crude oil production, oil-sands producers are implementing plans to increase their output through the 2020s, and new pipeline capacity from Western Canada into the central U.S. is being added on the all-important Enbridge Mainline system. With those stars aligning, the next big push by midstream companies will be expanding their ability to move Canadian barrels south to the Cushing hub in Oklahoma, the Patoka hub in Illinois, and refineries and export docks along the Gulf Coast. As a group, these new and expanded lines — plus a major pipe reversal — will represent one of the biggest midstream build-outs in the U.S. of this coming decade. Today, we begin a blog series about these projects and what’s driving their development.