Update On Cushing's Reversal In Fortunes -- March 27, 2015

Market Realist has a very, very interesting update on the reversals of Cushing story -- quite fascinating.

The graph and the list of pipelines -- both mind-boggling.

First the graph:

Now the pipelines that made the difference:

As new infrastructure came online, it enabled more crude oil to move out of Cushing. As a result, inventories at Cushing had been in a declining trend for the better part of 2014. The new infrastructure included, but not limited to:

• TransCanada’s  Keystone XL Pipeline
• Cushing Marketlink Pipeline
• Enterprise Product Partners’  and Enbridge’s ( joint venture Seaway Pipeline
• The new infrastructure included TransCanada’s Keystone XL Pipeline and Cushing Marketlink Pipeline, Enterprise Product Partners’ ( and Enbridge’s  joint venture Seaway Pipeline
• Magellan Midstream Partners’ Longhorn Pipeline

As a result of these pipelines, refiner demand from the Gulf Coast sucked crude oil supplies from Cushing down to as low as ~17.9 MMbbls at the end of July 2014.

Currently, stocks have rebounded to 54.4 million barrels.

Had the Keystone XL North been approved and operational, we would not have seen the 2014 dip.

Also, note the US situation for overall crude oil storage.

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Hanging Whistler's Mother

The Los Angeles Times is reporting:

Hanging a masterpiece on the wall of a museum is a lot like hanging a flea market painting up in your living room. Eyeballing makes all the difference.

"Can we see what it would look like 5 inches to the right?" asks Norton Simon Museum associate curator Emily Beeny on a recent Monday evening.

Inside the Pasadena museum, five men and one woman in somber, solid-colored clothing maneuver James McNeill Whistler's massive 1871 painting "Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1" on a rolling wooden cart called an A-frame.

You might know the painting by its more famous unofficial name: "Whistler's Mother."
It's getting an entire wall to itself in Pasadena as part of a 19th century masterpiece swap with the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.

Joining it in the gloaming for the spirited hanging are Édouard Manet's "Emile Zola" (1868) and Paul Cézanne's "The Card Players" (1892-96).

An American living in Paris, "Whistler's Mother" has not visited Southern California since 1933 when she was 72 years old and put on view at the Los Angeles County Museum of History, Science, and Art in Exposition Park (now the Natural History Museum). The passage of time has not changed her and she still wears the same outfit: a simple long-sleeved dress of midnight black with white lace cuffs and a plain white bonnet.

Whistler painted his mother, Anna, in 1871 when she was living with him in London's Chelsea. The Musée du Luxembourg acquired the piece in 1891 and it went on to be the first American painting to hang at the Louvre. Whistler, who struggled financially, had briefly handed his work over for credit after it met with a lukewarm reception at the Royal Academy of Art.

On this trip the painting is making a single, three-month stop at the Norton Simon for the exhibition "Tête-à-tête." During that same time the Orsay will display its exchange students from Pasadena, Pierre-Auguste Renoir's "The Pont des Arts, Paris" (1867-68), Vincent van Gogh's "Portrait of a Peasant (Patience Escalier)" (1888) and Édouard Vuillard's "First Fruits" (1899).

Through June 22, 2015 -- it looks like we will miss it. We won't be back in Los Angeles until July. Should we move our trip up? We saw all these paintings when we were stationed in Europe many years ago, but it would be fun to see them again.