The Crude Hub at Cushing, OK… RBN Energy

RBN Energy begins a blog on Cushing’s changing role in oil markets… Here is a tasty sampling of the first posting:

”Today, 16 major or medium-sized pipelines flow into Cushing (the thick black lines in Figure 1 show the major ones) — their combined capacity is nearly 3.7 MMb/d — from a long list of production areas, including Western Canada, the Bakken, the Rockies, SCOOP/STACK and the Permian; many other smaller pipelines flow into and out of Cushing, and more barrels of local production can be delivered to the oil hub by truck. Within Cushing, there’s about 93 MMbbl of existing storage capacity — most of it in “Cushing South” (larger white rectangle) and some in “Cushing North” (smaller white rectangle) — in the form of large, circular steel tanks, most of which have floating roofs that prevent the accumulation of potentially dangerous vapors between the tank roof and the stored oil.“

“As for pipelines out of Cushing, there are 14 major or medium-sized systems, with a combined capacity of more than 3.1 MMb/d, headed for destinations as varied as refineries in Whiting, IN; Coffeyville, KS; and Memphis, TN; and refineries and export docks along the Texas Gulf Coast — the last of these mostly via either Enbridge and Enterprise Products Partners’ jointly owned Seaway pipelines to Freeport or TransCanada’s Marketlink pipeline to Nederland.”