WTI Cushing

Every week, traders far and wide watch inventories at the storage hub of Cushing, OK, for insight into the U.S. crude oil market. Cushing has long been the epicenter for crude trading in the U.S., and while that role has shifted as the Gulf Coast gains more prominence, inventories at the Oklahoma hub are still a valuable indicator for traders looking for supply and demand trends. Recently, we’ve seen Cushing stocks drop significantly, declining for 11 straight weeks since the beginning of July to their lowest levels since last Thanksgiving. Today, we review the recent drop at Cushing, and discuss how a few changes in supply and demand fundamentals, plus strong pricing motives, helped drag down stockpiles this summer.

A new light sweet crude oil trading market is developing in Houston at the Magellan Midstream Partners East Houston terminal – delivery point for that company’s Longhorn and BridgeTex (50/50 owned with Plains All American) pipelines delivering crude from the Permian Basin. Light sweet crude from the Permian is also known as West Texas Intermediate (WTI) the domestic U.S. benchmark crude - widely traded at Cushing, OK where it underpins the CME NYMEX futures contract.  Today we review the developing market and the price relationships that underpin it.

Last week (see Sailing Stormy Waters) we reviewed limited market options for Western Canadian heavy bitumen crude producers. The US Gulf Coast is the only viable market with significant refinery capacity to process these crudes. At the moment there is limited transport infrastructure in place to get them there. As a result prices are being heavily discounted in the over supplied Midwest market. The Canadian benchmark Western Canadian Select (WCS) price traded this January at a discount of more than $38/Bbl to the US benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI). Today we examine how much prices are likely to improve once the pipelines are built.