Posted on 03/17/2011 8:42:29 AM PDT by epithermal
(EIA) — Amid rising concerns about the risk of a prolonged disruption in Libyan oil exports, crude oil inventories in Europe and elsewhere warrant close scrutiny from market participants.
The loss of Libyan crude oil supply will likely be partly offset by two factors: on the supply side, higher exports from Saudi Arabia and other producers; on the demand front, a temporary reduction in Asian consumption following the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan.
(Excerpt) Read more at eurasiareview.com ...
"Not only has the stockholding pattern of the United States, with crude oil inventories still above their seasonal range as of early March, begun to diverge from that of Europe and OECD Asia, where they had already fallen below range before the Libyan disruption, but U.S. stocks themselves are unevenly distributed between Cushing,
Oklahoma and the broader U.S. Midwest (where inventories reached an all-time high recently) and the rest of the Nation. That is not because the landlocked Midwest has purposefully been assigned the role of national tank farm. Rather, fast-growing crude oil supplies into Cushing (Figure 3) and the rest of the Midwest from Canada and the Bakken deposit in North Dakota have caused an inventory buildup that, given the lack of pipelines leading out of the Midwest, cannot easily or quickly be tapped by market participants beyond the landlocked region."
"While Midwest reserves look high on paper, market access to those supplies is, in practice, severely hampered — though not totally prevented — by logistical constraints.
Given the relative difficulty in deploying surplus Midwest inventories to make up for shortfalls elsewhere, aggregate U.S. and OECD inventory figures may be somewhat misleading."
So in addition to drilling we need to get to work building pipelines to access all the new reserves in North Dakota.
Proposed Canadian oilsands pipeline stirs U.S. debate
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2669922/posts
Enbridge to expand Bakken pipeline systems
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2673517/posts
Oil pipeline delayed for more environmental review
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2689481/posts
Oklahoma landowners challenge TransCanada’s pipeline (foreign company can use eminent domain?)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2659270/posts
The problem isn't moving the crude from producing regions to midwest refineries. The problem is moving crude and products from the midwest to the coasts. The current infrastructure is at capacity, more is not planned. Good luck with that.
Didn’t they used to use windmills to pump water? Let’s use all those electricity-producing windmills to pump oil! We can use the solar panels to heat the oil to make it flow easier! Green energy!
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