One Reason Why WTI Is Falling (Among Many) -- June 1, 2016

Updates

June 29, 2016: the tanker is finally unloaded.
 

Original Post

 

Reuters is reporting:

Four tankers carrying over 2 million barrels of U.S. crude are stuck at sea and cannot discharge at a Caribbean terminal because Venezuela has not yet paid supplier BP.

The cargoes are part of a tender [Venezuela] awarded in March to BP and China Oil.

The deal was to import some 8 million barrels of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude so Venezuela could dilute its extra heavy crudes and feed its Caribbean refineries.

Tic, tic, tic. It looks like the government ran out of "other people's money."

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Update On Eastbound Flows From Houston To Storage/Distribution Hub At St James, LA

These are some data points from an RBN Energy blog earlier this week.

Three and a half years ago, per RBN Energy:

the flow-reversals of the Houston-to-Houma (LA) pipeline and a connecting pipeline between Houma and the mammoth crude storage complex in Clovelly, LA was part of a wholesale change in Gulf Coast pipeline infrastructure aimed at facilitating the flow of domestic crude to market from growing shale production basins in the Bakken, the Permian Basin and the Eagle Ford to Houston and from there, to the hub at St. James.  

More recently:

St. James (located on the Mississippi 60 miles upriver from the Big Easy) serves as a critical storage and distribution hub. It receives crude by pipeline, by barge and tanker, and by rail; it has more than 30 MMbbl of storage capacity; and it sends crude out to area refineries with a combined capacity of 2.6 MMb/d. St. James also feeds the 1.2 MMb/d Capline pipeline, which transports crude and condensates north to Patoka, IL (but which has been running at far less than full-capacity). Much as Taylor Swift, The Eagles and Dolly Parton each draw a wide range of fans, the St. James hub serves as an oil mixing bowl, receiving regionally produced crudes such as the Gulf Coast benchmark Light Louisiana Sweet (LLS), Heavy Louisiana Sweet (HLS), medium sour crude Mars (produced offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, or GOM), and West Texas Intermediate (WTI), as well as ultra light crude from the Eagle Ford (condensate) that is piped north through Capline, connecting through other Canadian pipes to Alberta for use as a diluent in heavy Western Canadian oil sands.

The game changer: the Zydeco reversal --

Enabled St James to receive piped-in deliveries of Bakken and other Midcontinent crudes

Archived; a great summary.

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Summer Reading

Papa: Hemingway In Key West, James McLendon, c. 2007. This is a keeper. I've read many, many biographies of Hemingway and his wives. When my daughter gave me this slim paperback I was not particularly ready to read it. I was pretty much "hemingwayed-out." But yesterday, I picked it up and started reading it. Super. It covers his "lost years," 1928 - 1940. I think folks who live in Key West or who have visited Key West would love this book.

For those who might be interested in the rich and famous of the first half of the 20th century, those who would have been jet setters had there been jets then, I cannot recommend Rhonda K. Garelick's Mademoiselle: Coco Chanel and the Pulse of History highly enough. This is an incredibly interesting and entertaining book. I stumbled upon this book while visiting the Dallas Museum of Art and the museum's presentation of La Pausa. Googling will fill in the details.

I have no desire to read any biographies of Winston Churchill but coincidentally The New York Review of Books had an article on two Winston Churchill biographies in its most recent issue. It would be interesting to see if much is written about Coco Chanel and Winston Churchill.