Friday, Part I -- June 12, 2015

A long-time reader, and frequent contributor of links for the blog, mentioned

.... that he went to the Menards store in Dickinson.. it is huge ... compared to other Menards stores.

I asked the man loading some paver brick for us about the new store. He indicated this was the largest menards store of all, but that the one to open in Williston was to be a bit larger.

RBN Energy: moving crude oil products.

The U.S. produces and consumes more refined petroleum products than any other nation on Earth. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), production of finished motor gasoline (which includes ethanol) is averaging more than 9.5 MMb/d, while distillates production is flirting with 5 MMb/d and production of kerosene-type jet fuel (the most widely used; also known as kero-jet or jet-kero) has been holding steady at about 1.6 MMb/d.
Residual fuel oil, a heavier fuel often referred to as Number 5 or 6 and used for power generation, among other things, has gradually been falling out of favor and is being produced in smaller and smaller quantities.
U.S. consumption of gasoline, meanwhile, has been on a generally downward slope the last few years as fuel-efficiency gains outpace the gradual rise in the numbers of vehicles on the road and miles driven. Last year, gasoline consumption (again including ethanol) averaged just over 8.9 MMb/d, and it’s expected to inch down through the early 2020s as the federal government’s Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards ratchet up, although that trend may be slowed by lower prices since last year that have boosted domestic gasoline consumption through June 2015. 

Consumption of distillates topped 4 MMb/d in 2014, and is seen rising modestly the next few years as diesel use in cars (already common in Europe) catches on among Americans. Kero-jet consumption approached 1.5 MMb/d last year; its use also is expected to rise at a modest pace. And demand for residual fuel oil continues to peter out. We should also point out that U.S. refiners have increasingly been producing refined products for the export market as well as for domestic consumption.

It will come as no surprise to frequent readers of RBN Energy’s blogs that U.S. refineries are less and less dependent on imported oil, and instead are getting more and more of their crude from the Bakken, the Eagle Ford and other domestic sources. 

It’s also true that imports of refined products are down; as recently as 2005, 600 Mbd/d of gasoline was being piped or tankered in from abroad, but by 2014 the pace of gasoline imports had slowed to 49 Mb/d. Distillate imports are down too (from 365 Mb/d in 2006 to 194 Mb/d last year), as are imports of kero-jet (217 Mb/d in 2007; 94 Mb/d in 2014).
That means that U.S. refineries are producing the vast majority of the petroleum products our cars, trucks, trains, airplanes and oil furnaces burn. 

The fuels produced at U.S. refineries at a pace averaging more than 16 MMb/d need to be moved as efficiently as possible from refineries to where they are stored and (ultimately) consumed. More often than not, gasoline, distillate and jet fuel are moved much--or, in a few cases, all--of the way to market via pipeline. There are more than 63,000 miles of petroleum products pipelines in the U.S., which as you’d expect fan out from refineries (dark blue triangles) to storage terminals in areas with significant fuel demand.

There the stored fuels are generally distributed by tanker trucks to heating oil dealers and gas stations; many airports get their kero-jet delivered by smaller-diameter pipeline. (Later in this series we’ll look at the major petroleum products pipelines.)

Crude oil pipelines, meanwhile, are clustered in the major production areas and typically flow from production regions or import terminals to refineries.

Active rigs:

	6/12/2015	06/12/2014	06/12/2013	06/12/2012	06/12/2011
Active Rigs	76	185	187	211	169