This Bloomberg podcast is running in deeply familiar territory, discussing the economics of oil storage and movement. Mentions one surprising fact: North American oil production hit an all-time record last year. Worldwide coal production also hit an all-time high last year, but very little of it was in USA.
Conclusion: The enviros aren’t really trying to stop production, they’re only trying to give China the advantage. Stop CONSUMPTION elsewhere so China can have it all.
Another fact mentioned in the podcast: We have more pipeline capacity than we need. Some transactions are deliberately wasteful because the pipelines need to keep running steadily.
Conclusion: The protests to “stop” pipelines are really stopping the construction of even more excess and wasteful capacity. Last year I learned a related fact: The big kerfuffle about the South Dakota Keystone pipeline was NOT about blocking construction of the whole pipeline. Keystone has been running for many years. The protest was only about an unnecessary BYPASS or shortcut in the pipeline. Both sides were fooling us, and I don’t like being fooled by “my” side.
Most of the Bloomberg discussion was about tank farms, which are familiar to an old Okie.
Oil is pumped from each well into a local tank:
This is the well behind a house I rented in OKC in 1972. The back of the stone house is visible at right. I remember the tank, and I remember seeing trucks visit the tank occasionally to suck it out. The trucks would take the oil to bigger tanks, or to the refineries in Enid or Ponca.
Continental in Ponca had a MASSIVE tank farm, which is still there:
Apparently the facility is owned by Phillips now. Here’s the familiar view along South Avenue leaving town:
Nationally, most of the storage is in Houston or around Cushing. The Cushing field was partly developed by my oil ancestor, who left his name on a nearby town.
Polistra's Mill 