[thackney]

This post leads to the question of why more oil pipelines don’t run east to west?

Multiple reasons include the Rocky Mountains.

I think that the West Coast was self sufficient for a significantly long time. By the time they needed imports on the West side of the Rockies, they already needed them on east side as well.

There is not much incentive to transport imported oil from one coastline to another. They can just import their own.

[Recon Dad]

I do understand that in the case of the Baaken production the Rockies would be a major impediment and that California was at one time the number two oil state. But you could take a route out of Cushing or Texas and run south.

As to heading east I recently read that the east coast refineries were closing as much due to antiquated facilities as to the high cost of imports. If they could ship oil out of Houston it would be cheaper than the middle east oil they now use. (they can't due to the Jones Act) That begs the point why not a pipeline running either east from Chicago or the gulf.

Your insight is always appreciated.