Shutting Down the Keystone XL -- Reversing Gulf Oil Flow Into Cushing -- Implications for the Bakken

Rigzone: oil soars 3.2% on pipeline reversal:

• Initially: 140,000 bopd taken from Cushing
• Max capacity: 400,000 by mid-2013

Traders said the move will unlock value in the crude, which has been largely confined to use by Midwest refiners because of its delivery to the landlocked Cushing hub. Benchmark WTI is the crude most often delivered against the New York Mercantile Exchange light, sweet crude futures contract. The lack of infrastructure to move WTI crude out of Cushing has kept the crude sharply undervalued against world market prices.

News of the reversal had investors aggressively selling ICE Brent crude while buying up Nymex crude contracts, traders said. Brent's price had gained sharply against WTI this year, hitting a peak premium of $27.90 a barrel in mid-October.

Last paragraph at this link in Forbes:

The addition of further transport capacity from Cushing to the Gulf is a positive catalyst for WTI crude oil prices.  Citi’s analysts suggest the Brent-WTI spread will probably converge to $4 to $5 per barrel by next summer.  With Brent set to average $115 in 2012, it does seem like higher oil prices are here to stay.

What has the Brent-WTI spread been:

The spread, which reached $27.88 on October 14, narrowed to less than $9 during the day (Wedneday, November 16, 2011), as front month WTI contracts rose 2.7% to $102.04.  Brent crude, which is much more responsive to global demand, fell 0.5% to $111.68 by 2:32 PM in New York.