"They" Found "New" Storage For All That Crude Oil -- FuelFix -- April 5, 2015

Back to the crude oil storage discussion.

Before we get to the "new" article, let's post a couple of numbers so we can put things into perspective (some numbers rounded):

• Cushing, Oklahoma, PADD 2: 150 million bbls
• nationwide "additional" shell capacity: 20 million bbls
• US strategic petroleum reserve: 700 million bbls

Okay, now the "new" article on crude oil storage. FuelFix is reporting:

Louisiana’s offshore oil port, with huge underground storage caverns, was built to handle imported oil but is now leasing space to traders who need to store U.S. crude.

The Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (LOOP) recently auctioned 11.3 million barrels of monthly storage space and has scheduled another auction Tuesday [April 7, 2015].

Global production now exceeds consumption by about 1.5 million barrels a day.

Storage fees:

• ocean-going tankers: around $1/bbl/day
• Cushing: 30 cents/bbl/day -- but will change with the market; some charging as much as $1/bbl/day -- but no takers, yet, at that price
• LOOP: highest price: 10 cents/bbl/day

The caverns:

LOOP and the CME Group, formerly the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and Chicago Board of Trade, are offering contracts to store up to five grades of oil in LOOP’s eight caverns. The facility will auction 7 million barrels of storage space per month, or a total of 84 million barrels’ worth for the year.

The article also stated that oil companies would begin constructing more storage capacity if necessary.

A huge "thank you" to a reader for finding this article. A lot of data points which helps me put the Bakken into perspective.

*************************

A Private Enterprise "Strategic Petroleum Reserve"

I find this incredibly fascinating. It will be interesting to see how much oil will be put into non-SPR storage.

It's hard for me to believe we won't see some kind of "oil-shock" coming out of the Mideast sometime in the next ten years but with all that is in the US SPR and all the crude that appears to be filling the "new" non-SPR, private-enterprise storage facilities, it seems an "oil-shock" in the near future will be nothing like the "oil-shocks" of the past. However, nothing surprises me any more.

**************************

69 Years Later

I normally don't post these links, but this one is particularly good.  If the link breaks, it's a 2014 comparison of Hiroshima and Detroit "69 years later."