Repost from Reuters

FACTBOX-California crude sources and oil-by-rail projects

Mon Jul 21, 2014

HOUSTON, July 21 (Reuters) – California refiners remain far behind peers elsewhere in the country in replacing expensive imports with cheaper North American crudes from a new production boom.

No major crude pipelines cross the Rocky Mountains, leaving the isolated region dependent on rail to tap the burgeoning bounty in Texas, North Dakota and other growing oilfields.

More than half of the 1.7 million barrels of crude processed by California refineries each day is imported, largely from Saudi Arabia, Ecuador, Iraq and Colombia. The rest comes from California and Alaska, where output is declining.

Several refiners and logistics or pipeline companies are trying to tap U.S. and Canadian crude via rail, but California’s tough regulatory environment and growing opposition in light of fiery crude train crashes elsewhere could halt current projects and stop new ones from starting up.

Tesoro Corp and Savage Companies are proposing a 360,000 barrels per day railport at the Port of Vancouver in Washington that, if approved, could potentially replace more than 40 percent of California’s imported crude. Once railed to Vancouver, crude would be loaded onto barges or ships bound for West Coast refineries.

Here is a rundown of California’s crude slate and existing and pending oil-by-rail projects:

CALIFORNIA CRUDE
California’s 1.7 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude processed in 2013 came from these three main sources:
* Imports: 875,564 bpd, 51 percent of the total
* California, 631,441 bpd, 37 percent
* Alaska, 201,720 bpd, 12 percent
The non-California supply arrives via ships or barges except negligible oil-by-rail shipments, which reached 15,715 bpd in the first quarter of 2014.
That is less than 2 percent of the overall 873,967 bpd that originated on top U.S. railroads throughout the United States in the same period.
By comparison, in 2003 a little more than one-third of the 1.8 million bpd of crude processed in California came from imports:
* Imports, 636,923 bpd, 34 percent
* California, 792,920 bpd, 42.5 percent
* Alaska, 438,805 bpd, 23.5 percent
Source: California Energy Commission

(Reporting By Kristen Hays, editing by Peter Henderson)