takeaway pipelines

Oil sands, the workhorse of Alberta’s — and Canada’s — crude oil production growth, achieved a record production year in 2021. A steady turnaround in crude oil prices, improved market access, and the tried-and-true resilience of oil sands producers combined to drive the increase in output. With 2022 barely out of the starting blocks, the oil sands players have provided production guidance for this year that, if fulfilled, could set the oil sands on track for another year of record output. In today’s RBN blog, we consider the latest production guidance estimates and what these could mean for the availability of oil pipeline export capacity from Western Canada.

Appalachia natural gas producers hoping to get a big boost in pipeline takeaway capacity later this year were dealt some bad news recently. On May 4, Equitrans Midstream officially pushed back the in-service date for the already-delayed Mountain Valley Pipeline. The 2-Bcf/d, greenfield project is the last of the major planned expansions that would add substantial capacity from the prolific Appalachia gas-producing region and help stave off severe seasonal pipeline constraints, at least in the near- to midterm. Previous guidance had it coming online late this year, but Equitrans said it is now targeting start-up in the summer of 2022, pending water and wetland crossing permit reviews. The news is far from surprising considering the numerous regulatory and legal challenges midstream projects, including MVP, have previously faced in the Northeast over the past decade or so. But the resulting uncertainty leaves Northeast producers in a tight spot. In today’s blog, we will consider the implications of the MVP delay for Appalachia’s outflows.

Plains All American has an extraordinary collection of crude oil gathering systems and shuttle pipelines in the Permian Basin, as well as full or partial ownership interest in a number of long-haul takeaway pipelines to the Gulf Coast and the Cushing hub. As important as many of these individual systems and pipelines may be, it’s the interconnectivity among these assets — and especially Plains’ crude oil terminals in Midland and other West Texas locales — that gives the midstream giant’s Permian infrastructure a value far greater than the sum of its parts. Today, we’ll discuss the important role that Plains’ two terminals in Crane, TX, play in balancing the midstream company’s Permian crude oil delivery network and providing destination optionality.

Every day, another 4.5 million barrels of Permian crude oil begin the journey from wells in West Texas and southeastern New Mexico to refineries in the U.S. and abroad. For most of that oil, it’s no simple trek. Not only does it wend its way through gathering systems and shuttle pipelines to nearby hubs, it often needs to be directed between terminals within those hubs to reach the specific outbound, long-haul pipe that will take it to where it needs to go. We get it — you probably don’t need to know about every nook and cranny in the multi-terminal hubs at Midland, Crane, Wink, and elsewhere in the Permian, but it sure would help to understand generally how the flow of oil to market works, and why a terminal’s ability to provide destination flexibility is so crucial. Today, we continue our series on Permian hubs and terminals with a real-world example of how a barrel of Delaware Basin crude oil moves to Corpus Christi, Houston, or Cushing.

Midland may be the king of crude oil hubs in the Permian, with its immense storage capacity and robust trading activity, but the hub in Crane, TX, is at least a prince — and a particularly interesting one at that. In addition to its 7 MMbbl of tankage for storing, staging, and blending crude (and another 1 MMbbl on the way), Crane offers a slew of inbound pipelines from both the Delaware and Midland basin, plus links to and from the Midland hub and a number of outbound pipelines to both the Corpus Christi and Houston markets. Just as important to know about, are the various intra-hub connections among Crane’s 10 terminals, because they reveal how you can get crude to pretty much wherever you need it to be. Today, we continue a series on crude storage in West Texas and southeastern New Mexico.

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.

The collapse in crude oil prices and subsequent cuts in producers’ planned 2020 capital spending make it crystal clear that drilling activity in the Bakken will be slowing. Still, even with less drilling, it will take at least a few months for crude production in the North Dakota shale play to fall by much, and Bakken producers will continue to depend on crude gathering systems to give their wells the most efficient, cost-effective access to takeaway pipelines and crude-by-rail terminals. Longer term, it’s important to remember that sweet spots in the Bakken’s four-county core have some of the best rock outside the Permian. Today, we continue our series with a look at another leading midstreamer’s existing and planned gathering systems, as well as its joint-venture central delivery point, shuttle pipeline and crude-by-rail facility.

The crude-oil price crash of the past couple of weeks is forcing producers in every U.S. shale play to reassess their drilling-and-completion plans for the balance of 2020. Still, while the pace of activity in the Permian, the Bakken and other major plays may slow somewhat in the coming months if crude prices stay low, the vast majority of the new wells that are drilled will need to be connected to crude gathering systems — ideally ones that offer producers and shippers a high degree of destination optionality. Today, we continue our series on crude-related assets in western North Dakota with a look at another leading midstreamer’s gathering system, and its link to the Dakota Access Pipeline and a nearby refinery.

The Permian Basin has attracted more than its share of midstream start-up companies over the past few years, and for good reason. The region has experienced big gains in crude oil, natural gas and NGL production, and that’s put stress on the Permian’s already significant pipeline infrastructure and spurred the development of many new projects. One new midstreamer that’s made a big splash is Lotus Midstream, which, since it was formed in early 2018, has partnered with some of the Permian’s biggest players — including ExxonMobil and Plains All American — to advance the now-sanctioned 1.5-MMb/d Wink-to-Webster crude pipeline. It’s also acquired Occidental Petroleum’s (Oxy) Centurion pipeline system, which includes a lot of crude gathering pipe and is one of the two main takeaway links between the Permian and the Cushing, OK, hub. What’s Lotus up to, and how is it shaping Permian crude transportation? Today, we examine what has quickly become one of the largest midstreamers in the U.S.’s hottest shale play.

The U.S. midstream sector has been on a development binge the past few years, mostly in an effort to catch up — and then keep up — with production growth in the Shale Era’s two premier plays: the Marcellus/Utica in the Northeast and the Permian Basin in West Texas and southeastern New Mexico. What’s sometimes overlooked, however, is that significant numbers of new pipelines, processing plants and other key assets are being built in smaller, lower-profile production areas. The Niobrara’s Denver-Julesburg and Powder River basins are cases in point. Exploration and production activity in the D-J in particular has been soaring, and the resulting gains in crude oil, natural gas and NGL output has been stressing the region’s hydrocarbon-related infrastructure, thus spurring the development of new processing plants and pipelines. Also, interest in the Powder has been renewed — production there has been rebounding after crude-production ups and downs and gas-production declines through the 2010s. Today, we discuss highlights from RBN’s new Drill Down Report on the Niobrara production region.