VLCC At Corpus Christi -- Successfully Tested -- OXY -- May 29, 2017

Updates

September 25, 2017: update on the OXY Corpus Christi terminal. To be complete by end of 2018.

Later, 11:35 p.m. Central Time: see comments from a reader.

Propane - propylene here: https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=W_EPLLPZ_EEX_NUS-Z00_MBBLD&f=W.

Ethane - ethylene here: https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=METEXUS2&f=A.

Original Post

This is pretty incredible. Earlier a reader sent me a link to a story reporting that this historic event had been delayed 24 hours due to a local thunderstorm.

Apparently, things are back on schedule. New link to a new story. Data points:

• supertankers tested at Port Corpus Christi, TX
• mammoth tanker docking Friday at Port Corpus Christi, historic and successful
• 1,093-foot-long EuroNav tanker: Anne
• docked at Oxy's crude oil export facility
• classified as a Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC) 
• Belgian-owned ship: largest crude oil tanker to call on a Gulf of Mexico port
• will boost crude oil exports from Texas
• when fully loaded: the bottom of the hull -- 66 feet down
• unfortunately, Corpus Christi Ship Channel is only 45 feet deep
• so, they partially load the tanker dockside and then finish the loading in deeper waters using using a smaller ship and ship-to-ship transfer
• will fill up to 60% capacity dockside
• tanker at 100% capacity will hold 2.2 million bbls of crude oil for European and Asian markets
• Port of Corpus Christi plans to deepen its channel; build a higher harbor bridge to accommodate larger vessels

Think about that:

• ten years ago we were talking about Peak Oil
• President Carter: "start wearing cardigan sweaters"
• President Obama: "we can't drill out way to cheaper oil"
• now, VLCCs are docking off Texas
• Texas will dredge a channel to make it twenty feet deeper (20/45 = 44%)
• will build a new bridge over the channel
• all to export oil from the Permian -- an old basin thought to be dead ... until the Bakken revolution
• not in a generation; not in a lifetime; in less than ten years

GDPNow 2Q17 -- Forecast 3.7% -- May 29, 2017

GDPNow: Latest forecast: 3.7 percent — May 26, 2017.

The GDPNow model forecast for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the second quarter of 2017 is 3.7 percent on May 26, down from 4.1 percent on May 16. 

The forecast for second-quarter real residential investment growth fell from 8.3 percent to 3.1 percent after Tuesday's housing related releases from the U.S. Census Bureau and Wednesday's existing-home sales release from the National Association of Realtors.

Wow. And the scuttlebutt is that Americans want to buy real estate, but not enough new, affordable houses are being built to keep up with demand.

Next forecast: Tuesday, May 30, 2017.

Quick: What Ethnic Group / Nationality Makes Up The Largest Immigrant Population In North Dakota? -- May 29, 2017

Link here and here for answer.

From the first link:

Third Verse, Same As The First -- Rigzone -- May 29, 2017

Updates

July 20, 2017: three years into cheap oil, OPEC is still hoping for a rebound.

The six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council have curtailed subsidies and introduced new taxes to bolster non-oil revenue and reduce ballooning budget deficits.

Much of the savings, however, have been due to spending cuts and the pace of reforms has slowed across the region, said Monica Malik, chief economist at Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank. Overall progress in economic diversification has been limited, she said.

Absent a rebound in oil prices, analysts say it’s unlikely that these nations can repair their finances without deeper spending cuts that could further hurt growth. The standoff between a Saudi-led bloc and Qatar is also undermining investor confidence at a time when the GCC is seeking foreign funds.

Original Post  

Refresh your memory with this post. And this post, it's just a matter of time before it's every Arab for himself.

Now for the third verse, same as the first, from the Rigzone staff:

Although crude exports figure heavily in its namesake, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries may be oblivious to their relevance now that the United States is back in the market.

After a 40-year absence, the United States began shipping its crude around the world in January 2016, but the importance of the occasion is something OPEC hasn’t quite grappled with, experts say. Rather, OPEC’s focus remains on revenue, if not market share, to keep the world’s crude supply and demand in balance.

And once the nine-month extension of production cuts expires next March – and if global oil benchmarks still haven’t busted through to remain above $50 for a significant period of time – the club may see that it was simply not enough.

More than 1 million barrels of oil are leaving U.S. ports each day, noted Jamie Webster, senior director at the BCG Center for Energy Impact. Petroleum product exports are north of 3 million barrels of oil per day.

“Right now, it’s not something they want to bring into their general discussions, even if it is the reality,” he said. “One thing about OPEC you have to always understand is that they are a low consensus organization – they are just like the U.S. Congress in that – and they are reactive versus proactive. They don’t generally start making moves seeing that something is going to be changing X or Y; they make a move after something pushes them.”

And more:

And for its own exports, OPEC loads only started to slow in May, said Antoine Halff, senior research scholar at the Center of Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, in his commentary, ‘OPEC’s Catch 22?’

“April loadings were at a peak, and overall shipments since January have failed to indicate any significant drop compared to October levels,” he noted, reflecting on figures from ClipperData. 

Happy Memorial Day to one and all from Sophia and from me (it might be hard to see, but Sophia has a little Texas cowboy hat on also):

Quickies -- May 29, 2017

I'm alive and well but not much to blog about.

NASCAR: I was pretty much disappointed in the Coca Cola 600 -- I assume it was just me -- I missed the first stage and then when I got home I saw the hour and a half rain delay; the second stage was fairly boring, or maybe it was already into stage three. Regardless, it still seemed boring.

By stage 4, I no longer cared and turned in before the race ended. I see that it ended on a pretty sad note; the one who "nearly won" (as Hillary would say), ran out of gas. It's hard for me to say that Austin Dillon "won" the Coca-Cola 600. He won one of four stages, each stage 100 laps. Whoopee.

I may or may not have stayed with it to the end had it been a full 400-lap race but I think it would have been a better race. This would be like the NBA playing four quarters with each quarter counting as a game but the "winner" of the "full" game belongs to whichever team scored the most points in the 4th quarter.

NASCAR: "picking his nose" was probably the "high point." Like Hillary, he should be happy, he "nearly won."

"Purt near": this Hillary thing, I can see, is becoming a meme, "I didn't lose, I nearly won." But it did not start with her. (By the way, British Airways has a new commercial: "we nearly had a good weekend.") But as I was saying, the "nearly won" meme did not start with Hillary. Again, it was a rancher who started it all:

Refinery: I have no dog in this fight and I have no opinions one way or the other, but perhaps things would go a bit more smoothly if the proposed refinery would be sited southeast of Belfield. Having said that, I wonder what leaves a larger carbon footprint: the proposed refinery or 760,000 tourists visiting the park every year, most in their gas-guzzling SUVs towing a trailer coming from as far away as ... the land of a 1,000 malls -- Minnesota. Just saying.  Someone else can do the math but assuming there are four people in the SUV, 760,000 tourists works out to 190,000 vehicles each year. If the large percentage of visitors are seniors (those over 65 years of age) with a $10 lifetime pass that would be as many as 380,000 vehicles. It seems if folks really wanted to cut down on the carbon footprint in the park, the government would ban automobiles and pick-up trucks. As for me, I'm beginning to think that national parks need to be closed to vehicles of any sort (even EVs run on coal). Per square foot, my hunch is that Yellowstone Park has more carbon emissions during the summer than downtown NYC -- a statistic for those who are concerned about carbon emissions; I'm not.

Sami: quick -- who are the Sami? They are those nomadic Nordic reindeer-loving people. It turns out -- and I did not know this until a few minutes ago -- that the National Geographic was incredibly insensitive all these years, calling the Sami "Lapps." It turns out that "Lapps" is a racist term. The Sami are effectively the sixth Nordic people, Europe's only nomads (if you don't count the Romanican gypsies who follow tourists rather than reindeer), whose territory spans the borders of northern Norway, Sweden, licorice-loving Finland, and parts of northwest Russia, depending on where their reindeer roam. From Michael Booth's The Almost Nearly Perfect People, c. 2014, page 175.

Sámi artist Berit Margrethe Oskal (no relation to the webmaster of the MillionDollar Way) from Guovdageaidnu, singing/yoiking "Eamifámut" (English: "Ancient Forces"):