Crane

In the far western reaches of the Permian Basin lies Orla, TX — a town steeped in history and significance. Orla, which can be fittingly translated into “border” in Spanish, is about 40 miles north of Pecos, near the New Mexico border in Reeves County. Founded in 1890 as a section house for the Pecos Valley Railroad, Orla evolved from a modest stop along the tracks to a bustling oil supply hub — not your typical hub with lots of tank farms close together but still a heavy throughput area — by the 1960s. Though often considered a ghost town today, with a population thought to be in the single digits, Orla remains a vital player in the oil industry. As the origin region for several major takeaway pipelines in the Permian, this once-thriving community continues to serve as a crucial link in the region’s vast network of oil exploration, extraction and transportation, particularly along heavily traveled U.S. Highway 285. In today’s RBN blog, we look at the role that Orla plays in crude oil takeaway from the prolific Permian Basin. 

Hundreds of miles separate the Permian Basin from the U.S. Gulf Coast, but in the Shale Era traversing that span has become increasingly important to Permian producers. Billions of dollars have been invested to expand capacity to move Permian production — crude, natural gas or NGLs — to the Gulf Coast to take advantage of surging export markets. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll focus our attention on EPIC Midstream and its EPIC Crude Pipeline, which has operated above its nameplate capacity for much of this year.

The great Texas philosopher Matthew McConaughey once said, “I don’t want to just revolve. I want to evolve.” Few pieces of crude oil infrastructure embody that spirit of adaptation quite like ONEOK’s Longhorn Pipeline. Starting out as a Houston-bound conduit for Permian crude, Longhorn later reversed its flow and started moving refined products, then — at just the right time, in the early days of the Permian’s Shale Era rebirth — flipped back to eastbound crude service. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll detail the pipeline’s evolution and its critical role in moving Permian oil to the Gulf Coast market.

Colorado City, TX, has deep roots in the history of the American West, beginning as a ranger camp in 1877. As cattlemen flocked to the area, it quickly became a vital center for the cattle industry, earning the moniker “The Mother City of West Texas.” The arrival of the Texas & Pacific Railway in 1881 marked a turning point for the town. It was formally organized the following year, its economy bolstered by cattle, cotton and a soon-burgeoning oil industry. A 1920s oil boom further elevated Colorado City’s economic status, marking the beginning of its now long-standing importance in the oil industry. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll explore how Colorado City continues to serve as a critical junction, facilitating the movement of crude from the prolific Permian Basin to major destinations such as Cushing, OK, and the U.S. Gulf Coast. 

The steady growth in Permian crude oil production that everyone was banking on just a couple of years ago didn’t happen as planned. When COVID intervened, Permian oil output sagged and then stabilized at just over 4 MMb/d until last month’s Deep Freeze, when production plummeted and then quickly rebounded. Still, in anticipation of increasing output from the Permian, new takeaway-pipeline capacity from West Texas to the Gulf Coast was built out over 2016-20, as was new crude storage capacity at hubs in the Delaware and Midland basins to support the operation of the new lines. So, with all that construction, the Permian must be sittin’ pretty from a midstream infrastructure perspective, right? Don’t be too sure. From a big-picture perspective, the region has more than enough takeaway capacity, but there are strong indicators — and recent evidence — that in-region storage capacity hasn’t kept pace to be able to handle any hiccups (and worse) that can occasionally rattle the oil patch. Or maybe it’s just that folks don’t fully understand where the Permian’s storage capacity is, how it’s interconnected, and how it’s used. Today, we begin a blog series on crude storage in West Texas and southeastern New Mexico.

For evidence of America’s unwavering entrepreneurial spirit, look no further than smaller midstream companies that develop crude oil gathering systems in the Permian. These midstreamers — many of them backed by private equity — scramble to identify production areas on the cusp of needing gathering lines, propose systems to serve them, convince producers to dedicate acreage, then lay pipe, install tankage and get things up and running. All of this occurs in an atmosphere of intense competition. A number of new and growing crude gathering systems are under development today in southeastern New Mexico, an area that has experienced more than its share of production growth in the past couple of years. Today, we continue our series with a look at 3 Bear Energy’s Hat Mesa Oil Gathering System in the northern Delaware Basin, which was developed from scratch in Lea County and now serves 10 producers there.

By their very nature, crude oil gathering systems in the Permian are works in progress. They often start out small, serving only a few wells owned by a single producer — or maybe two or three. Over time, the systems typically branch out to serve more producers and more wells, and they add capacity as drilling activity picks up. Sometimes, they evolve into much larger systems with multiple gathering hubs and regional transport pipelines that shuttle large volumes of gathered crude long distances to big marketing hubs like Crane, TX, and Midland, where the oil can flow into any number of takeaway pipelines to Cushing or the Gulf Coast. Today, we continue our series on Permian crude gathering systems with a look at Oryx Midstream’s 860-mile gathering and regional transport network in the super-hot Delaware Basin.