Random Note: So Why We Will Ship Bakken Oil by Ship To California, And Not Build CBR Terminals

Earlier, there was a story about a proposal to ship Bakken oil by rail to Port of Vancouver, and then shipped to California. The obvious question was why not rail it directly to California?

The answer? Big "thank you" to a reader.

Bloomberg is reporting:

Unloading trains directly at a California refinery is unfeasible because obtaining state permits would take too long, Hackett said.

“Why are they building it there rather than building it next to refineries in California?” he said. “Because they can’t build it in California, they can’t get it done fast enough. It’s all of this permitting, it’s very difficult to do.”

This refers back to the original story posted earlier today. This is a bit more of the linked Bloomberg article:

Tesoro Corp. plans to build a complex in Washington that would unload crude from trains and put it on vessels, the latest move to get oil from the central U.S. to refining centers on the West Coast.

Tesoro and Savage Companies are forming a joint venture at the Port of Vancouver that would be able to move 120,000 barrels of oil a day and might be online in 2014, the companies said in a statement yesterday. Approval from port commissioners and regulators is needed.

That project and another bought in February by Global Partners LP show companies are taking extra steps to get crude from the middle of the U.S., where output is increasing, to refineries on the coasts, which are seeking to replace shrinking output from California and Alaska.

Unloading trains directly at a California refinery is unfeasible because obtaining state permits would take too long.

I cannot make this stuff up. The Chinese must laugh at these stories. (Most folks who visit the MDW log in from servers in the US. The second largest group, according to "Blogger Statistics" are from China. The third are from Canada, and then Poland, Germany, Turkey, France, UK, Ukraine, and Norway. )