Working Storage

During the days when Gulf Coast refineries were dependent on crude imports for the majority of their feedstocks, tankers delivered crude from overseas markets. Those same tankers also played an important role in preventing refinery supply disruptions because they acted as a floating storage component in the supply chain. With waterborne imports to the Gulf Coast declining as domestic and Canadian production is increasingly delivered by pipeline, the buffer provided by floating storage will be much reduced. Today we continue our series looking at Gulf Coast crude storage needs in the shale era.

The natural gas trading market has been getting a lot of attention lately and not in a good way. A couple of weeks ago the Wall Street Journal published two articles describing the fact that traders have started to reduce their presence in natural gas storage.  At about the same time, Oneok, once a big player in energy services shut down its operation that had used natural gas storage and pipeline transportation capacity to provide those services to the industry.   With gas production still coming on strong, more gas being used for power generation and the possibility of serious LNG exports on the way, what’s the problem?  Today we look deeper into turmoil in the natural gas markets.