Import Decline

Back In the 1980s and 90’s, significant crude imports began to make up for declining US domestic production. During that era supertankers delivering crude to the Gulf Coast provided a kind of floating storage buffer that could absorb downstream disruptions in supply and demand. Nowadays Gulf Coast refineries are increasingly being supplied with domestic crude by pipeline.  Today we begin a new deep dive series looking at the evolution of Gulf Coast crude storage needs in the shale era.