May 22, 2019 – Natural Gas Intelligence
‘Tsunami’ of Crude Output Could See Gulf Coast Bottlenecks Emerge Without New Export Capacity
By Leticia Gonzales
With U.S. crude oil exports hitting record highs earlier this year, and a tsunami of new production expected in the next couple of years, a massive bottleneck could emerge along the Gulf Coast as early as 2020, according to RBN Energy.
Crude exports reached an all-time high of 3.6 million b/d in February and have averaged just over 2.7 million b/d since the beginning of the year, with exports topping 3 million b/d in multiple weeks, RBN analyst John Zanner said Tuesday in Houston.
“The Gulf Coast is now the premiere market for crude,” Zanner told an audience of 600 or more at xPortCon, RBN’s first conference dedicated to U.S. oil, natural gas and natural gas liquids exports.
During the 16-month period from January 2018 to April, 548 different vessels made a total of 1,402 crude export shipments from Gulf Coast terminals, according to RBN. Of these shipments, 69% involved Aframax tankers, 21% Suezmax and 6% smaller Panamax (less than 500,000 bbl); 3% were loaded directly onto very large crude carriers (VLCC).
The overwhelming majority of shipments on Aframax tankers are because of the common practice of using these and Suez ships to make ship-to-ship (STS) transfers onto VLCCs in offshore Gulf of Mexico loading zones, according to RBN. The firm’s data shows that under half (46%) of the crude export vessels loaded at Gulf Coast ports were for STS transfers destined primarily to Asia.
Read the full article here: https://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/118449-tsunami-of-crude-output-could-see-gulf-coast-bottlenecks-emerge-without-new-export-capacity
