Yes, It Appears To Be A Terrorist Attack -- US Official -- March 22, 2016

Two almost-simultaneous explosions in Belgium, at the international airport and a metro station near the airport, at least one by a suicidal bomber, with reports of someone yelling "Allahu Akbar" just before the explosions, were reported overnight following the capture of the mastermind being the Paris terrorist attacks last year. The US response:

A U.S. official said the explosions appeared to be a terrorist attack. It comes days after the arrest of Salah Abdeslam, one of the alleged Paris attackers who was captured in Brussels on Friday after a four-month manhunt.

I'm glad we have that cleared up.

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Back to the Bakken

Active rigs:

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Active Rigs	32	107	198	187	205

RBN Energy: Transportation Fuel/Heating Oil Pipelines To The East Coast. More in-depth notes here.

The East Coast consumes more than 200 million gallons of gasoline, diesel, heating oil and jet fuel a day, but produces only one-fifth of that total, most of it at New Jersey and Pennsylvania refineries.

To keep the region’s cars, trucks, trains and airplanes moving (and many of its homes and businesses heated) huge volumes of fuels need to be delivered from elsewhere, mostly via two pipelines from the Gulf Coast and the rest by ship—some from Gulf and other U.S. ports and some from overseas. Today, we continue our examination of the infrastructure that moves gasoline, diesel, heating oil and jet fuel to the nation’s largest fuel-consuming region with a look at four major pipelines.

The aim of this series is to describe the logistics involved in moving refined petroleum products like gasoline, diesel, heating and jet fuel (which we have dubbed GDHJ) to the East Coast from their primary production region—the Gulf Coast, also known as Petroleum Administration for Defense District (PADD) 3.

Because the East Coast (PADD 1) produces only one-fifth of its GDHJ needs and depends on a mix of piped-in fuel, fuel shipped (by Jones Act vessels) from Gulf Coast ports, and fuel imported from overseas, this series also considers the PADD 1 ports that receive shipments of fuel from PADD 3 and foreign countries, and the smaller pipelines that move fuel from those ports to PADD 1 consumers.

As we said in Episode 1 of our series, PADD 3 produces about 7.5 MMb/d of GDHJ (the equivalent of 315 million gallons), but consumes only one-third of that (about 2.5 MMb/d). In sharp contrast, PADD 1 produces about 1 MMb/d of these fuels, but consumes five times that amount (about 5 MMb/d). According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) about 2.8 MMb/d of GDHJ is moved, on average, from PADD 3 to PADD 1, accounting for nearly three-fifths (58%) of the East Coast’s total consumption of transportation fuels. Of that 2.8 MMb/d PADD 3-to-PADD 1 transfers, 82% (2.3 MMb/d) is moved by the two primary refined products pipelines between and through the two regions: Colonial Pipeline and Plantation Pipe Line.

Given their significance, let’s zero in on these two pipelines first.