Posted on 03/17/2011 5:35:38 AM PDT by thackney
Tulsa-based Magellan Midstreammay reverse the direction of flow on a section of its Houston-to-El Paso pipeline for refined products and begin sending crude oil to Houston on it instead.
The current Longhorn Pipeline transports about 90,000 barrels per day of refined products. But potential shippers have expressed enough interest in turning the line into a crude oil transporter that Magellan is moving forward with permitting and final engineering, said CEO Mike Mears.
A section of the line from Crane, Texas, to Houston would be reversed (see map), allowing for the flow of up to 200,000 barrels per day of crude from fields in the Permian Basin to Houston refineries.
Refined products would still reach El Paso by flowing on the Magellan South Pipeline from Houston to the Dallas-Ft. Worth area and then west to Odessa.
“We believe our pipeline system coupled with the crude oil distribution system purchased last year would provide the most direct and cost-efficient route to deliver West Texas crude oil to the refineries on the Houston Ship Channel and Texas City,” Mears said.
The reversed flow on the Longhorn Pipeline might also give producers in the Central and Eastern portions of the Eagle Ford shale a way to get oil to market.
The Longhorn previously carried crude from West Texas to Gulf Coast refineries when it was built in the 1950s. When it was expanded more than a decade ago and reversed to bring refined products from Houston to West Texas, it became a source of contention. Ranchers and others in Central Texas in particular were concerned with possible harm to the Edwards Aquifer from the pipeline.
The previous pipeline operators — then Dallas-based Longhorn Partners — agreed to additional safety enhancements, including leak-detection devices, frequent inspections and promises to not carry the additive MTBE and to reduce flow during times of flooding in Central Texas.
Earlier this month Magellan announced plans to build a 180 mile pipeline to bring crude and condensate from the Western portions of the Eagle Ford to refineries in Corpus Christi.
I suspect the following is key to this change. There are several projects related to getting the Eagle Ford Oil to refineries and is expected to continue to grow significantly in the oil produced.
give producers in the Central and Eastern portions of the Eagle Ford shale a way to get oil to market.
Thanks, I didn’t realize there are oil pipelines in Texas—passing through Fort Worth.
Natural gas, gasoline, diesel, jet fuel.
Well, that will make the tree hugging, evironmentlist, hippies in Austin very happy. They had a hissy fit when Longhorn decided to send refined products to El Paso.
Several of them got on an overpass with a HUGE “Just say No to Longhorn” banner during rush hour and had traffic all messed up on Loop 1.
APD arrested them and hauled them to jail. Lucky for me, it was south of where I get on (heading north) and I thought there must have been a bad accident.
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