Then this morning, Don sends me the following Reuters story, about how that very subject:
Rail shipments of crude from the landlocked and oversupplied Midwest to refiners in the Gulf Coast appear set to surge next year, to nearly double the volume now flowing in congested pipelines between the regions.This was also interesting:
The shipments, which were rare until this year, have already grown to around 100,000 barrels per day (bpd) in recent months, industry sources told Reuters. Two rail terminals in St. James, Louisiana are receiving much of the crude, while other sites like Houston are taking additional crude.
The daily cargoes between the Midwest (PADD 2) and the Gulf Coast (PADD 3) could triple to 300,000 bpd by late 2012, industry sources said. Logistics firms unveiled plans for several new crude-by-rail terminals over the last four months.
Since the Department of Energy does not track crude-by-rail, there's no official data on how much is moving.The government tracks everything else, I was surprised that it does not track oil shipments by rail. Be that as it may, I started posting about crude-by-rail about six months ago, I suppose. I don't have a good quantitative mind, but when one spends a lot of time in the Bakken, and even more time thinking about it, one starts to pick up on trends.
Warren Buffett is either very, very smart, or very, very lucky (I assume a 30/70 split) -- I am thinking of of his purchase of Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNI) in 2010. But one has to remember, the sage of Omaha was probably stopped at BNI rail crossings all his life growing up in Nebraska. He had lots of time to think about the potentials of rail.
