Posted on 12/07/2015 4:53:44 AM PST by thackney
Dec 3 Oil producers may be struggling as a result of low prices but the oil storage business has never been in better shape.
U.S. refiners, traders and logistics companies added an extra 11 million barrels of working storage capacity for crude oil between March and September, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Since September 2011, total capacity for storing crude in the United States has expanded by almost 87 million barrels, 19 percent, the EIA reported on Monday ("Working and Net Available Shell Storage Capacity" Nov. 30).
Most of the extra capacity has been added at tank farms and other offsite locations (+84 million barrels) rather than refineries (+2.5 million barrels) where space is often constrained.
The biggest additions have come in states on the U.S. Gulf Coast (+50 million barrels) with most of the rest in the Midwest (+32 million barrels) especially around the NYMEX delivery point at Cushing (+18 million barrels).
Some commercial crude is stored in underground salt caverns leached from salt domes or bedded salt but most is held in aboveground storage tanks constructed to special standards set by the American Petroleum Institute (API 650 tanks).
By contrast, the U.S. government's Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which contains almost 700 million barrels of crude, is entirely stored in salt caverns in Texas and Louisiana.
Commercial storage capacity is also expanding around the rest of the world including major trading hubs in Singapore, South Africa and the Caribbean.
Commercial storage is big business although the companies involved all prefer to keep a low profile.
Most facilities are owned by unlisted private firms or subsidiaries of oil companies, although one international operator, Vopak, with storage facilities around the world, including some in the United States, is quoted on the Amsterdam stock exchange.
Storage remains profitable because there are...
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
This reminds me,
Is our strategic petroleum reserve full, now?
Almost full.
But our congress and president plans to sell some off to pay bills.
U.S. Ending Stocks of Crude Oil in SPR
http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MCSSTUS1&f=M
$305B highway bill taps Fed, oil reserves
http://thehill.com/policy/transportation/261693-highway-bill-agreement-taps-fed-oil-reserves-custom-fees
12/01/15
The $305 billion highway bill announced by lawmakers on Tuesday includes approximately $70 billion in revenue from areas other than the federal gas tax that is traditionally used to pay for transportation projects.
The 1,300 page measure, which was unveiled days before a Friday deadline for renewing transportation funding, relies largely on revenue from reducing interest rates paid by the Federal Reserve to large banks, selling oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve that is used to prevent energy crises and increasing fees for customs processing.
The funding will be used to offset a transfer of about $70 billion into the Department of Transportation’s Highway Trust Fund to close a gap that is estimated to be approximately $16 billion a year until 2020.
I think it is a (huge) mistake to withdraw from the strategic petroleum reserve now.
Oil will never get cheaper than it is right now, in my opinion. Historically low prices, right now.
We need the reserve. Fill it, to the brim, and don’t use it until/unless we really need it.
Peak storage!
You don't have a position in the government do you?
Why do we even Ethanol?
Government Mandate
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