New Pipelines Drain West Texas Crude Stocks to 4-Month Low

摘要

Crude inventories in West Texas dropped to the lowest in four months after a converted pipeline began transporting crude from the nation's biggest shale oil field to the U.S. Gulf Coast, data from market intelligence provider Genscape showed. The drop-in storage in the Permian Basin is another sign that new pipelines out of the region have begun to alleviate a crude bottleneck that depressed local crude prices as production overwhelmed pipeline capacity and filled storage tanks. Crude inventories in the Permian Basin fell to 15 million barrels in the week to Feb. 19, the lowest since October and down from a record 22 million barrels in November. That glut had doubled in size from 11 million barrels in June, according to the Genscape data. The decline began in mid-November after Plains All American Pipeline LP expanded the capacity of its about 300,000 bpd Sunrise Pipeline.