East Houston

The current capacity of incoming crude pipelines into the Houston refining region is about 1.4 MMb/d. By the end of 2015 that will have more than doubled to 2.9 MMb/d. Add to these flows crude railed into new and developing unloading terminals as well as barges of Eagle Ford crude from Corpus Christi in south Texas and the prospects for congestion build up. Foreign waterborne imports into Houston are falling as pipelines supply more refineries but in the process a lot of floating storage flexibility is being lost. Today we describe the Houston crude distribution system that could be overwhelmed by the new flows.