Oil Pipeline Opens, Prices Surge -- Keystone XL 2.0 South Rollout Much Smoother Than ObamaCare Rollout

Updates

January 27, 2014: I was curious as to the exact date when TransCanada started "injecting" oil into the Keystone XL 2.0 South pipeline. Interestingly, a day that will live in infamy for activist environmentalists: December 7, 2013. Seventy-two years earlier there was another day that will live in infamy. FuelFix.com is reporting:

TransCanada is pleased to confirm that at approximately 10:04 am Central Time on Saturday, December 7, 2013, the company began to inject oil into the Gulf Coast Project pipeline as it moves closer to the start of commercial service,” TransCanada spokesman Shawn Howard said in an email.

Original Post

The Wall Street Journal is reporting:

The opening of a pipeline to ease a supply bottleneck at a key storage hub has boosted U.S. oil prices, but analysts say the rally is likely to be temporary.

Light, sweet crude for March delivery rose to $96.64 a barrel Friday on the New York Mercantile Exchange, ending the week with a 2.2% gain. It was the biggest weekly gain for U.S. oil futures in more than a month. Crude began flowing through the southern leg of TransCanada Corp.'s pipeline last week, connecting the storage hub of Cushing, Okla., to refineries along the Gulf Coast.

Supplies have been building up in Cushing, as innovations in drilling techniques increased U.S. oil production faster than the infrastructure could get it to refiners. Cushing is also the delivery point for the Nymex futures contract, and the large stockpiles there have depressed U.S. oil prices for years. While some investors expect the opening of the long-awaited pipeline to clear up that logjam, analysts and traders say the project will only move the supply glut farther south because the refineries soon will shut down to perform seasonal repairs.

And oil demand could remain tepid in the winter months, while domestic production shows no signs of slowing down.

"While the addition of the Keystone pipeline does move barrels from one point to another, it doesn't increase consumption of crude at the refinery level, and it doesn't add or subtract to the supply of crude that's coming out of the ground," said Tim Evans, an energy analyst at Citi Futures.