Category Archives: Oil prices

Global oil market: demand for road fuels has peaked and is now falling

Repost from The Economist
[Editor: An interesting European perspective on the future of world oil production and sales.  Note references to Valero near the end.  – RS]

A fuel’s errand

Making the most of a difficult business

| RUNCORN

THE sprawling acres of pipes, towers and tanks, which smash and rebuild hydrocarbon chains to turn crude oil into petrol, diesel and other useful stuff are vast and complicated. But the impressive scale of oil refineries is not matched by their profits. Refining in Britain is a miserable business these days.

In the 1960s big oil companies were so sure that demand for petrol would rise forever that they built the refineries to match. But demand for road fuels has peaked and is now falling—by 8% between 2007 and 2011. High fuel prices and stalling sales of vehicles that are anyway far more efficient are to blame. The result is wafer-thin margins and closures. Since 2009 two British refineries, at Coryton in Essex and in Teesside, have shut down. All but one of the remaining seven has been sold or been put up for sale in recent years.

Refineries operate in a global market. Petrol and diesel can be sent by tanker around the globe as readily as crude. Competing with sparkly, super-efficient new refineries in Asia and the Middle East is hard. Moreover, Britain’s older refineries were designed to produce petrol, which is increasingly the wrong fuel. Petrol sales by volume fell by 34% in the decade to 2011 while diesel grew by 73%. Around 40% of diesel is now imported. Nor do British refineries produce enough kerosene, which powers passenger jets, to supply the home market.

Big oil firms have sold up, preferring to invest in exploration and production. But why was anyone buying? For one thing, refineries are going cheap. Shell sold Stanlow to Essar Oil, an Indian firm, in 2011 for $350m (then £220m). In the same year Valero, an American refiner, bought Pembroke from Chevron for $730m.

The efforts to squeeze more returns from Stanlow show how refining can pay. Independent refiners like Essar and Valero are prepared to spend more time and money than big oil firms. Expertise and investment has put Stanlow, a 75m barrels-a-year refinery, well on the way in its plan to improve margins by $3 a barrel by 2014.

Essar aims to make Stanlow at least break even in bad times (in 2011 two-thirds of European refineries were losing money) and make decent profits when conditions improve. Generating energy using gas and tweaking technology to take crude from sources other than the North Sea, at better prices, is helping. Stanlow also has some natural advantages. It is the only refinery in the north-west and the closest to Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham. Though refined fuel can be moved by pipeline, some 55% of the refinery’s output goes “off the rack”, loaded into road tankers to feed a big local market. More distant refineries, with higher transport costs, would have trouble competing.

But the market for fuel is still shrinking and tiny margins mean profits can be wiped out by small shifts in the price of crude or other costs. In the past five years Europe has lost 2.2m barrels a day (b/d) of refining capacity. Volker Schultz, Essar Oil’s boss in Britain, reckons that another 1m b/d needs to go. But that is not his only concern. Efforts in Britain to introduce a carbon floor-price will put its refineries at a disadvantage to European ones, and European environmental legislation will make the whole continent’s refineries even less competitive. It must seem to the industry as if it has a large hole in its tank and a small patch to fix it.

 

Farm Bureau posts Wenatchee Washington opinion: No Oil Trains Here

Repost from The Farm Bureau’s FBACT Insider (The Unified National Voice of Agriculture)
[Editor: I was heartened to learn that the Farm Bureau has a progressive agenda on energy.  See http://www.fbactinsider.org/issues/energy.  – RS]

OPINION: Move along, no oil trains here

June 27, 2014 – The Wenatchee World

June 26–Peak oil? Not yet. Like it or not, the United States now is among the world’s leading oil producers, pumping around 9 million barrels a day and rising. That’s not far behind Saudi Arabia, and makes a lot of sheikdoms look puny. And like it or not, this compressed energy will be burned to turn the economic wheels of the world. To get from producer to customer, however, it has to go somewhere.

Just not here.

The information reluctantly released Tuesday shows that in the absence of pipelines the railways of the northern tier have become, not exactly pipelines on wheels, but getting closer. Information on oil shipments by rail was provided to states and emergency responders by order of the Department of Transportation earlier this month, with the expectation that it be kept confidential for security reasons. Then DOT ruled there really weren’t any security reasons, and so the train data hit the wires on Tuesday.

The report from BNSF detailed one week of shipments late in May of light crude from the Bakken field of North Dakota. It showed not what rail lines were used, but where trains traveled by county. These are loaded trains of at least 1 million gallons of crude, but often around 3 million gallons. Around 18 such trains a week enter Washington, mostly through Spokane, and apparently traveling south through the Tri-Cities and down the Columbia Gorge. Some then make their way north.

Spokane County saw 16 trains for the week; Lincoln, 17; Adams, Benton, Franklin, Skamania and Clark, 18; Pierce, 15; King, 11; Snohomish, 10; Skagit, 9; Whatcom, 5. Kittitas, Grant, Douglas and Chelan — 0.

So as expected, no heavy oil trains make the heights of Stevens Pass, although we have seen empties headed east.

The mounting news makes it look likely that we will see more and more tank cars passing through. Just this week is was announced that the Commerce Department had agreed to allow two Texas companies to export small amounts of lightly refined oil, possibly creating a tiny fracture in the 40-year-old ban on U.S. oil exports. The Obama administration and experts were quick to downplay this, saying it didn’t constitute an end to the embargo, which would require congressional approval. But it was a big enough crack in the door to raise Texas crude prices and drop oil stocks.

No one still alive can recall exactly why the United States forbid its oil to be exported, except that the people in government are always excessively paranoid about gasoline prices rising for reasons other than increased taxation. Also, at its peak the United States imported 60 percent of its oil needs. Now that’s down near 40 percent. The experts say a full-fledged end to the export embargo would raise crude prices at home, and make world markets less volatile. All that just increases the incentive to hunt, drill, frack and pump.

Exports are, almost always, good for a nation’s economy, and so oil transport will have a future on the West Coast. We will see. Remember that rail shipments of oil in Washington were zero as recently as 2011. The state estimates they hit 17 million barrels in 2013, and some say that could triple.

Remember, it will be burned. Some 25 years ago, the International Energy Agency estimated that fossil fuels provided 82 percent of the world’s energy consumption. After decades and billions invested in renewable energy, the IEA announced in February, that of all the world’s energy consumption, fossil fuels provide … 82 percent.

Tar Sands on the Tracks: Railbit, Dilbit and U.S. Export Terminals

Repost from DESMOGBLOG

Tar Sands on the Tracks: Railbit, Dilbit and U.S. Export Terminals

2014-06-17  |  Ben Jervey

Last December, the first full train carrying tar sands crude left the Canexus Bruderheim terminal outside of Edmonton, Alberta, bound for an unloading terminal somewhere in the United States.

Canadian heavy crude, as the tar sands is labeled for market purposes, had ridden the rails in very limited capacity in years previous — loaded into tank cars and bundled with other products as part of so-called “manifest” shipments. But to the best of industry analysts’ knowledge, never before had a full 100-plus car train (called a “unit train”) been shipped entirely full of tar sands crude.

Because unit trains travel more quickly, carry higher volumes of crude and cost the shipper less per barrel to operate than the manifest alternative, this first shipment from the Canexus Bruderheim terminal signaled the start of yet another crude-by-rail era — an echo of the sudden rise of oil train transport ushered in by the Bakken boom, on a much smaller scale (for now).

This overall spike in North American crude-by-rail over the past few years has been well documented, and last month Oil Change International released a comprehensive report about the trend. As explained in Runaway Train: The Reckless Expansion of Crude-by-Rail in North America (and in past coverage in DeSmogBlog), much of the oil train growth has been driven by the Bakken shale oil boom. Without sufficient pipeline capacity in the area, drillers have been loading up much more versatile trains to cart the light, sweet tight crude to refineries in the Gulf, and on both coasts.

Unfortunately, some of these “bomb trains” never make it to their destination, derailing, spilling, exploding and taking lives.

While shale oil, predominantly from the Bakken, has driven the trend, Canadian tar sands producers are increasingly turning their attention to rail. Hobbled by limited pipeline capacity out of Alberta, and frustrated by their inability (so far) to ram the Keystone XL pipeline through the American heartland, tar sands producers are signing contracts with Canadian rail operators. Canadian National Railway is getting the lionshare of the business.

Canadian National not only has the infrastructure in place near Alberta’s tar sands developments, but also operates 19 subsidiary railways in the United States under the Grand Trunk Corporation. Strung together, Canadian National network stretches 2,800 miles from Western Canada down to the Gulf Coast, the only company that can offer straight-through shipping from the tar sands to Gulf Coast refineries.

Of the upstream infrastructure — or the loading terminals up near the tar sands, the Oil Change International report explains:

At the time of writing there were 31 terminals in operation that load tar sands or heavy crude, with six of these expanding and an additional eight planned or under construction…

The first terminal designed to load unit trains with Canadian tar sands crude, the Canexus terminal in Bruderheim, northeast of Edmonton, Alberta, started operations in December 2013. It has a capacity of 70,000 bpd and loads tar sands bitumen from MEG’s Christina Lake SAGD project, among others.

Downstream, rail terminals are similarly adapting to handle shipments of tar sands crude. From the Runaway Train report:

Terminals designed to unload tar sands crude are currently concentrated in the Gulf Coast region, where the biggest concentration of heavy oil refining capacity is located…

The Gulf Coast terminals have about one million bpd of unloading capacity today, set to grow to over two million bpd in 2016. Some of this capacity is at refineries such as those operated by Valero in Port Arthur, Texas, and St. Charles, Louisiana. Valero has ordered 1,600 insulated and coiled tank cars specifically for hauling tar sands crude to its refineries.

The Gulf Coast also has significant midstream capacity on the Mississippi River, where crude oil, including tar sands crude, is unloaded from trains and pumped from storage tanks into local pipelines or loaded onto barges that deliver to coastal refineries via the Intracoastal Waterway.

Meanwhile, refineries on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts are angling to get in on the action, hoping that their shipping advantages to Europe and Asia respectively will prove appealing to tar sands producers.

As described in Runaway Train, terminals on the West Coast are particularly well positioned to serve as a “fast-track out of North America for Canada’s tar sands.”

There are currently 13 crude-by-rail unloading terminals in California, Oregon and Washington, of which four are currently expanding their capacity. There are also 11 terminals planned or under construction.

Many of these are at refineries that, like their counterparts on the East Coast, are looking to take advantage of discounted domestic or Canadian crudes that they have little hope of ever gaining access to via pipeline. With a larger proportion of refining capacity geared up for heavy tar sands processing than exists on the East Coast, West Coast refineries such as the Valero facility in Wilmington, Calif., and the Phillips 66 refineries in California and Washington, are keen to rail in tar sands crude.

Accessing these West Coast refineries by rail, as well as the prospect of export terminals in Washington and Oregon, are potentially the tar sands industry’s best bet for major market expansion in the face of delays and possible cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline and pipelines to the Canadian west coast such as the Northern Gateway and Trans Mountain expansion.

These latter projects, which are primarily focused on exporting tar sands crude to Asia, face particularly stiff opposition from coastal communities, which fear the destruction of fisheries and coastal environments from the increased tanker traffic that would ensue.

Given the relative proximity particularly of Washington State refineries and ports to Alberta’s tar sands fields, these terminals offer oil companies a potential solution to the transportation bottlenecks that are threatening the viability of tar sands production growth. At least three proposals in southern Washington State have the potential to unload tar sands crude from trains and load it onto tankers for export to Asia or transport to refineries along the California coast.

Tar sands producers are particularly motivated to get their crude to coastal terminals and refineries for export. As we’ve covered in the past on DeSmogBlog, tar sands companies want to export their product, because the low-grade crude is more easily refined into diesel, which has a much larger market in Europe and Asia. This is the core reason that the Keystone XL, if built, would be little more than an export pipeline, and wouldn’t actually provide more oil to American markets, nor lower American gas and heating oil prices.

The Oil Change International report also shines a light on the fact that though crude exports are banned from the U.S., domestic refineries can legally export crude from Canada.

While crude oil of U.S. origin is subject to export restrictions, no such restriction applies to exports of Canadian oil through the U.S., as long as it can be shown that no U.S. oil was blended.

Shippers wishing to export Canadian oil from U.S. ports still have to apply for export licenses from the Department of Commerce, but these can and have been granted. Given the lack of pipeline capacity to Canadian ports, it is attractive for tar sands producers to find ways to get their product to a U.S. port where it can be exported. Crude-by-rail terminals on the West and East Coasts are strategically important as they are closer to Alberta than those on the Gulf Coast and it is therefore cheaper to reach these ports by rail.

Railbit vs. Dilbit

As this still-nascent segment of crude-by-rail develops, it’s worthwhile to take a moment to understand the distinction between a couple of different tar sands products that are being shipped by train. The vast majority of tar sand crude-by-rail shipments thus far have been diluted bitumen, or dilbit. Dilbit, which you have heard of as the tar sands crude that is already funneling through North American pipelines, is composed of the sticky, viscous tar sands bitumen, which is then mixed with about 30 percent diluent, allowing it to flow through pipelines. This mixture of dilbit is particularly volatile and abrasive, and reports have pointed to it being more likely to cause leaks and spills and explosions during transport.

Railbit is a relatively new designation for crude, and is defined as bitumen that has been mix with roughly 17 percent diluent. Moving railbit, rather than dilbit, saves tar sands shippers about half of the so-called “diluent penalty,” or the cost of adding the diluent to the mix.

So why are most trains still loaded with dilbit? Because to this point, most loading terminals are still being fed by feeder pipelines or trucks that can only handle this more watered down blend. That and the fact that special loading and unloading facilities are necessary to handle railbit, which is more viscous and needs to be heated in special tank cars to be unloaded. Some downstream terminals are making these investments, seeing railbit as a viable alternative going forward, but today dilbit is still dominant.

Either way, it’s dirty and dangerous, and tar sands bitumen in any form does nothing to lower American energy bills. Bitumen, by rail or pipeline or barge, is bound to wind up on a tanker to Europe or Asia.

US “Not Immune” to Oil Price Hike

Repost from Oil Change International
[Editor: Significant quote: “Put simply the oil boom has not insulated American consumers from the price spike that the violence in Iraq will cause. And Iraq is not the only major oil producer with ongoing political instability. Think about recent events in Nigeria, Venezuela and Libya, to name just three.”  – RS]

US “Not Immune” to Oil Price Hike

Andy Rowell, June 16, 2014

Crisis_in_Iraq_leading_to_higher_gas_pricesFor years the American oil industry has argued that the ongoing U.S. oil boom will bring about “energy independence” and drive gasoline prices  down. Americans are supposed to be enjoying an era of cheap, plentiful energy.

As the oil industry has set about fracking America, decades of declining production has been reversed in just a handful of years. The US is now the world’s largest producer of oil and gas.

The oil industry has persuaded or forced communities across North America to compromise their water supplies and their health to allow the fracking revolution with the promise of lower prices and energy security.

So American consumers should apparently be appreciating the impact of the country’s shale revolution as crude oil and condensates production has just surpassed its previous peak, reached way back in 1970. A 44-year old record has just been broken.

Not so. As the Energy Policy Information Centre pointed out, at the end of last month. “Despite all the promise of the oil boom, for most Americans, its economic benefits remain an abstract concept in the absence of relief at the gas station.”

The sad truth is that despite the US economy being half as “oil intense” compared to the 1970s – as measured by barrels of oil consumed per $1,000 of GDP –  American households and businesses still spend a staggering 900 billion dollars annually on petroleum.  The average American household dedicates around 5.3% of its spending to petroleum, with the burden felt much more heavily by low income households.

And here comes the real irony. Despite the US reaching a record production peak, last week the price of Brent crude rose 4 per cent, its biggest one-week rise since July last year. Wholesale US gasoline rose with it and thus US consumers will notice higher pump prices probably as soon as this week (see chart).

FT RBOB Gasoline 10 days to June 16Source: Financial Times

And the reason is the ongoing turmoil in Iraq. The escalating violence there is threatening supplies from OPEC’s second largest producer, which produces in excess of 3 million barrels of oil a day.

Bloomberg is quoting Societe Generale saying that if the violence escalates and production is affected, Brent crude may jump from its current position of $113 to $120 or even $125. It may go even higher.

“This is a serious situation in terms of the global oil market,” Victor Shum, a vice president at IHS Energy Insight in Singapore, told Bloomberg. “This situation in Iraq really threatens potential supply growth going forward.”

So far the fighting has not spread to the south, where the US Energy Information Administration estimates that three-quarters of Iraq’s crude output is produced. But if the Southern oil fields fall, the global oil price could skyrocket to unprecedented levels.

What this shows, as Ed Crooks, points out in today’s Financial Times is that, despite its own fracking revolution, “the US is not immune to the effects of disruption in world markets.”

Put simply the oil boom has not insulated American consumers from the price spike that the violence in Iraq will cause. And Iraq is not the only major oil producer with ongoing political instability. Think about recent events in Nigeria, Venezuela and Libya, to name just three.

The boom that is needed in order to truly insulate the American economy from the relentless turmoil in oil producing countries is a boom in efficiency, public transit, smart growth and electric vehicles. These technologies and policy initiatives are here now and ready to go, but the political and financial weight behind them has been overshadowed by the lure of oil boom riches.

Instead of “All of the Above“, we need energy policies that will help American’s reduce the amount of oil they need to buy, at any price.

For safe and healthy communities…