Morning Note: October 8, 2018

The law of relativity: my sister texted me that Amtrak was on time and she would be here soon. Soon? It's at least a 12-hour train ride.

What, me worry? Saudi Crown Prince to Trump -- we've replaced all Iran's lost oil. Lost? Most of us know where it is.

It's no longer about transportation: petrochemicals becoming largest oil demand drivers. Rigzone staff.

Saudi's petrochemical project: on track? Aramco and Total have signed agreement on front-end engineering and design (FEED) for a $9 billion giant petrochemical Saudi complex,

Portland, OR: home of the homeless. BBC.

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Back to the Bakken 

Wells coming off the confidential list over the weekend / today:

Monday, October 8, 2018: 

• 33453, 818, Equinor, Weisz 11-14 XE 1H, Painted Woods, 49 stages; 9.3 million lbs, t4/18; cum 57K 8/18;

Sunday, October 7, 2018: 

• 33529, SI/NC, Hess, AN-Gudbranson-153-94-2215H-12, Elm Tree,

Saturday, October 6, 2018: 

• 33115, 1,950, CLR, Bailey 10-24H, Pershing, a huge well, 50K-month; 4 sections, 66 stages, 16 million lbs, t6/18; cum 94K 8/18;

Active rigs:

$73.81↓	10/8/2018	10/08/2017	10/08/2016	10/08/2015	10/08/2014
Active Rigs	64	59	33	68	190

RBN Energy: part 4, the pipelines that flow out of the crude oil hub at Cushing.

The crude oil hub in Cushing, OK, is a big numbers kind of place: 94 million barrels of storage capacity, 3.8 MMb/d of inbound pipelines and 3.1 MMb/d of outbound pipes, not to mention a spaghetti bowl of connections between the many tank farms within greater Cushing.

To truly understand the “Pipeline Crossroads of the World” — what it does and how it works — you need to know the hub’s assets and how they fit together. Today, we continue our series with a look at the pipes that transport crude from Cushing to Gulf Coast refineries and export docks, and to inland refineries in the Midcontinent, the Midwest and what you might call the Mid-South — places like Memphis, TN; El Dorado, AR; and Shreveport, LA.

This is the fourth blog in our deep-dive review of the Cushing hub and — given its significance to the oil market as well as the many angles from which it needs to be considered — we’ve only just begun. Previously we discussed the fact that Cushing’s role in the crude oil market has been in flux. Permian oil production has been surging, the ban on U.S. oil exports is long gone, and the Gulf Coast — not Cushing — is the premium market for U.S. crude owing to its concentration of refineries and export docks.

Later we looked at the 94 MMbbl of crude oil storage at Cushing — where it’s located (mostly South Cushing, with some at North Cushing), the companies that own the storage (with Plains All American, Enbridge and Magellan Midstream Partners leading the pack), and how much they each own. We also split the users of Cushing storage into six categories (producers, midstream companies, refiners, marketers, or some combination thereof) and explained how each group uses its storage in different ways (some purely operational, some purely commercial and the rest some mix of the two).

Finally, we put Cushing’s tank farms into one of three buckets: those with “big hubs” and “big spokes” (a lot of storage capacity, plus tie-ins to major inbound and/or outbound pipelines, as well as strong links to other storage within Cushing); “small hubs” and “big spokes” (less storage capacity, big pipes in and/or out — focused on crude oil throughput); and “small hubs” and “small spokes” (relatively small amounts of storage capacity and only limited pipeline connections into, out of and within Cushing). In the last segment, we turned our attention to the pipelines that transport crude oil to the Cushing hub from Western Canada (Keystone, Flanagan South and Spearhead), the Bakken (Pony Express, with assists from Enbridge’s Mainline system), the Rockies (Pony Express, Saddlehorn/Grand Mesa and White Cliffs), the Permian (Basin and Centurion), and within Oklahoma itself (STACK, Glass Mountain and Mississippi Lime).