Monday, April 4, 2016 -- Taxes Dues In Two Weeks; We Start The Week With 29 Active Rigs In North Dakota; Great Article On St James Hub, Louisiana -- Important Hub For ND Crude

When are taxes due this year?

Procrastinators, listen up.

You get three extra days to gather your paperwork and file your federal tax return in 2016. The tax deadline is April 18.

You can thank Washington, DC, for the gift. Washington will celebrate Emancipation Day on April 15.

Active rigs:

	4/4/2016	04/04/2015	04/04/2014	04/04/2013	04/04/2012
Active Rigs	29	94	192	186	207

RBN Energy: The St. James Crude Hub Continues to Develop.

The St. James, LA, crude trading hub provides feedstock to 2.6 MMb/d of regional refining capacity as well as refineries in the Midwest.

St. James is also an important distribution hub for crude from North Dakota, South Texas, the Gulf of Mexico and onshore Louisiana as well as imports arriving at the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (LOOP).

Crude storage and midstream infrastructure at St. James has been expanding in recent years as the trading hub handles larger volumes of domestic production. Today we begin a new series looking at infrastructure and crude pricing at St. James.

St. James is located on the Mississippi River 60 miles upriver from New Orleans and about 60 miles Northwest of the Clovelly, LA, landing point for crude imported through LOOP. The offshore LOOP terminal is the only deep water port on the Gulf Coast capable of unloading million barrel plus cargoes from very large crude carriers (VLCCs) and ultra large crude carriers (ULCCs – up to 3 MMBbl).

We have recently looked at the potential for LOOP to develop export capabilities.  At the link the map in Figure #1 shows the central position that St. James occupies in the Eastern Gulf Coast crude oil refining and distribution system.

We will get to the inbound and outbound pipeline systems and refinery connections in a minute. Being on the Mississippi River means that St. James can also accommodate barge or tanker (up to Aframax size – about 750 MBbl) receipts or loadings and receive crude delivered from the Midwest via inland waterways.

In the past 5 years midstream companies have built out rail unloading facilities at St. James that receive domestic crude – particularly from North Dakota.

The Louisiana hub has also been used as a transit point to ship surplus supplies of U.S. ultra light crude (condensate) from the Eagle Ford basin in South Texas to Canada via the Capline pipeline for use as a diluent in heavy Western Canadian oil sands. More recently St. James has been a receipt point for condensate delivered by barge down the Ohio River and Mississippi from the Marcellus and Utica.