Jet Kero

Mexico’s need to import increasing amounts of transportation and cooking fuels--mostly gasoline, diesel, and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG)—from the U.S. is spurring an infrastructure development boom on both sides of the Rio Grande. Over the past few years this has been a frequently reoccurring pattern:   A fast growing market for hydrocarbons emerges, and the need to efficiently move increasing volumes of product from points A and B to points C, D and E quickly becomes urgent. All hands are called on-deck: trucks, railroads, barges, pipelines—plus storage facilities and distribution terminals. Today, we consider the latest initiatives to deliver gasoline, diesel, jet-kero and LPG from Texas to its southern neighbor.

A combination of pipelines and ships delivers some 4 MMb/d of transportation and heating fuels to the U.S. East Coast, most of it from Gulf Coast refineries. But there’s always room for improvement in refined products delivery infrastructure, whether it’s pipeline or port capacity expansions, new pipeline spurs, or new storage capability. The aim of these projects is almost always the same: to make distribution more efficient and to hold down the per-barrel cost of delivery. Today, we conclude our series with a look at possible infrastructure improvements and a note about the challenges these projects face.

The East Coast consumes more than 200 million gallons of gasoline, diesel, heating oil and jet fuel a day, but produces only one-fifth of that total, most of it at New Jersey and Pennsylvania refineries. To keep the region’s cars, trucks, trains and airplanes moving (and many of its homes and businesses heated) huge volumes of fuels need to be delivered from elsewhere, mostly via two pipelines from the Gulf Coast and the rest by ship—some from Gulf and other U.S. ports and some from overseas. Today, we continue our examination of the infrastructure that moves gasoline, diesel, heating oil and jet fuel to the nation’s largest fuel-consuming region with a look at four major pipelines.

Every day, refineries along the U.S. Gulf Coast produce far more gasoline, diesel and jet fuel than the region could possibly use, and demand for these fuels along the East Coast for transportation and heating is far higher than local refinery production. To help bring the two regions into balance, a complicated network of pipelines, ports, Jones Act vessels and storage facilities has been developed over the past 70 years—and continues to be updated and expanded. Today, we begin a new series on how millions of barrels of these fuels are moved between and within the nation’s largest refining region and the region where more is used than any other part of the U.S.

Mexican production of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel continues to fall and Mexico’s imports of these refined petroleum products from the U.S. are rising fast to keep pace with increasing demand. Longer term upgrade projects to increase Mexican refinery transport fuel are finally underway. But before refinery upgrades make a dent in imports, two ambitious refined-products pipeline/terminals projects will make it easier and more efficient to move large volumes of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel from Texas refineries into Mexico.  Today, we update our coverage of fast-moving developments in Mexico-U.S. hydrocarbon trading.

Crude oil prices staged a recovery of sorts yesterday (January 21, 2016) after a crushing first two weeks of the year. But even if this proves to be the turning point, a lot of damage has been done to crude and refined product prices along the way. Jet fuel is a case in point. The U.S. Gulf Coast spot price for kerosene-type jet fuel closed on Wednesday (January 20, 2016) at $0.78/Gal - the lowest it’s been since September 2003, and barring a dramatic recovery in crude oil prices, the refined petroleum product, that is mostly used for aviation and by the military, will remain cheap this year. That’s good news for the airlines and, one would hope, for air travelers too. But it’s bad news for refiners because of narrowing jet margins over crude oil.  Today, we examine the global market for jet fuel, and how it’s affecting U.S. refiners.