Tag Archives: Pipelines

U.S. gasoline prices tumble as Harvey subsides

A pump jack is seen at sunrise near Bakersfield, California October 14, 2014. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson/File Photo

By Ron Bousso

LONDON (Reuters) – Benchmark U.S. gasoline prices slumped on Monday to pre-Hurricane Harvey levels as oil refineries and pipelines in the U.S. Gulf Coast slowly resumed activity, easing supply concerns.

Brent crude oil futures were flat at $52.75 by 1340 GMT, paring earlier losses after a powerful North Korean nuclear test triggered a shift away from crude markets to assets perceived to be safer, such as gold.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures, however, were up 34 cents at $47.63 barrel as U.S. demand, hit by reduced refinery activity since Harvey made landfall on Aug. 25, recovered.

NYMEX gasoline futures were down 3.2 percent at $1.6916 a gallon, levels last seen on Aug. 25, the day Harvey struck, crippling production and causing widespread flooding.

Still, damage to the oil infrastructure in the Gulf Coast hub by Harvey appeared less extensive than some had feared.

Harvey has now been downgraded to a tropical storm.

A number of major refineries, which convert crude oil into refined products such as gasoline and jet fuel, as well as distribution pipelines, were gradually resuming operations on Monday.

Valero Energy’s 225,000 barrels per day (bpd) Texas City refinery was the only plant reported to be running at normal rates so far.

At the same time, about 5.5 percent of the U.S. Gulf of Mexico’s oil production, or 96,000 barrels of daily output, remained shut on Sunday, down from a peak of more than 400,000 bpd last week.

“The disruptions from Hurricane Harvey in the U.S. Gulf Coast are gradually clearing. In the broader scheme of things, it appears that so far the energy industry was spared major damages to assets and infrastructure,” analysts at Vienna-based JBC Energy said in a note.

“However, some Houston area refineries will likely remain offline for some time longer.”

Traders booked dozens of gasoline tankers over the past week from Asia and Europe to the United States and Latin America in order to plug supply shortages in the wake of the shutdowns.

European gasoline refining margins dropped by nearly a fifth on Monday.

And while the U.S. government tapped its strategic oil reserves for the first time in five years last week, the head of the International Energy Agency (IEA) said the global energy watchdog still sees no need for a coordinated international release of oil stocks after Harvey.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott estimated damage at $150 billion to $180 billion, calling it more costly than Hurricanes Katrina or Sandy, which hit New Orleans in 2005 and New York in 2012 respectively.

Traders were nervously watching developments in North Korea, where the military conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test over the weekend. Pyongyang said it had tested an advanced hydrogen bomb for a long-range missile, prompting the threat of a “massive” military response from the United States if it or its allies were threatened.

That put downward pressure on crude as traders moved money out of oil – seen as high-risk markets – into gold futures traditionally viewed as a safe haven for investors. Spot gold prices rose for a third day, gaining 0.9 percent on Monday.

Overall trading activity in the oil futures market was expected to be low on Monday due to the U.S. Labor Day public holiday.

 

(Additional reporting by Henning Gloystein in Singapore; Editing by Louise Heavens)

 

Texas edges closer to recovery after Harvey as key pipeline restarts

Samaritans help clear debris from the house of a neighbor which was left flooded from Tropical Storm Harvey in Houston, Texas, U.S. September 3, 2017.

By Catherine Ngai

HOUSTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Gulf Coast moves closer to recovery from Hurricane Harvey on Monday when the biggest American fuel system restarts a key segment shut down by devastating rains and officials weigh how to pay for billions of dollars in damage.

The move by Colonial Pipeline to resume transporting distillates such as diesel fuel comes as the Gulf region’s energy industry starts to come back online.

Flooding from Harvey drove up fuel prices by shutting down almost a quarter of U.S. refining capacity.

The storm came ashore on Aug. 25 as the most powerful hurricane to hit Texas in more than 50 years. It killed an estimated 50 people, displaced more than 1 million and damaged some 200,000 homes in a path of destruction stretching for more than 300 miles (480 km).

Colonial said it expected to reopen a Texas section of its network from Houston to Hebert, Texas, on Monday, which is the Labor Day holiday. The line would be ready to start moving gasoline on Tuesday, it said.

The pipelines’ reopening will restore links between refineries along the Gulf Coast, the U.S. petrochemical hub, to markets in the Northeast.

Another fuel system, Explorer Pipeline, said a link running from Texas to Oklahoma restarted on Sunday, with a second pipeline from Oklahoma into the Midwest expected to resume on Monday.

Retail fuel costs surged through the weekend amid fears of shortages, despite the restart of several key Gulf refineries that had been crippled by Harvey.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin challenged Congress on Sunday to raise the government’s debt limit in order to free up relief spending. Texas Governor Greg Abbott said the storm had caused up to $180 billion in damage.

President Donald Trump’s administration has asked Congress for an initial $7.85 billion for recovery efforts, a small fraction of what will eventually be needed.

Even that amount could be delayed unless Congress quickly increases the government’s debt ceiling, Mnuchin said. The United States is on track to hit its mandated borrowing limit by the end of the month unless Congress increases it.

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said the city expected most public services and businesses to be restored by Tuesday, the first day after the Labor Day holiday.

About 37,000 families were staying in 270 shelters in Texas, the highest number reported by the American Red Cross.

The city mandated the evacuation of thousands of people on the western side of Houston on Sunday to accommodate the release of water from reservoirs that otherwise might sustain damage. The storm stalled over Houston, the fourth-largest U.S. city, dumping more than 50 inches (1.3 m) on the region.

 

(Reporting by Catherine Ngai in HOUSTON and Ian Simpson in WASHINGTON; Editing by Paul Tait)

 

Dakota protesters regroup, plot resistance to other pipelines

A man warms up by a fire in Sacred Stone camp, one of the few remaining camps protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline in Cannon Ball, North Dakota, U.S., February 24, 2017. REUTERS/Stephen Yang

By Terray Sylvester

CANNON BALL, N.D. (Reuters) – Opponents of the Dakota Access Pipeline who were pushed out of their protest camp this week have vowed to keep up efforts to stop the multibillion-dollar project and take the fight to other pipelines as well.

The Oceti Sakowin camp in Cannon Ball, North Dakota, was cleared by law enforcement on Thursday and almost 50 people, many of them Native Americans and environmental activists, were arrested.

The number of demonstrators had dwindled from the thousands who poured into the camp starting in August to oppose the pipeline that critics say threatens the water resources and sacred land of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. The tribe has said it intends to fight the pipeline in court.

The 1,170-mile (1,885 km) line, built by Energy Transfer Partners LP, will move crude from the shale oilfields of North Dakota to Illinois en route to the Gulf of Mexico, where many U.S. refineries are located.

Tonya Olsen, 46, an Ihanktonwan Sioux from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, who had lived at the camp for 3-1/2 months, said she was saddened by the eviction but proud of the protesters.

She has moved to another nearby camp on Standing Rock Sioux Tribe reservation land, across the Cannon Ball River.

“A lot of people will take what they’ve learned from this movement and take it to another one,” Olsen said. She may join a protest if one forms against the Keystone XL pipeline near the Lower Brulé Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, she added.

Tom Goldtooth, a protest leader and executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, said the demonstrators’ hearts were not defeated.

“The closing of the camp is not the end of a movement or fight, it is a new beginning,” Goldtooth said in a statement on Thursday. “They cannot extinguish the fire that Standing Rock started.”

Many hope their fight against the project will spur similar protests targeting pipelines across the United States and Canada, particularly those routed near Native American land.

“The embers are going to be carried all over the place,” said Forest Borie, 34, a protester from Tijuana, Mexico, who spent four months in North Dakota.

“This is going to be a revolutionary year,” he added.

NEXT TARGETS

Borie wants to go next to Canada to help the Unist’ot’en Native American Tribe in their long-running opposition to pipelines in British Columbia.

Energy Transfer Partners, the Dallas-based company constructing the Dakota Access pipeline, is already facing pushback from a diverse base of opposition in Louisiana, where it is planning to expand its Bayou Bridge pipeline.

Other projects mentioned by protesters as possible next stops include the Sabal Trail pipeline being built to transport natural gas from eastern Alabama to central Florida, and Energy Transfer Partners’ Trans-Pecos in West Texas. Sabal Trail is a joint project of Spectra Energy Corp, NextEra Energy Inc and Duke Energy Corp.

Another protest is focused on Plains All American Pipeline’s Diamond Pipeline, which will run from Cushing, Oklahoma, to Valero Energy Corp’s Memphis refinery in Tennessee.

Anthony Gazotti, 47, from Denver, said he will stay on reservation land until he is forced out. Despite construction resuming on the Dakota pipeline, he said the protest was a success because it had raised awareness of pipeline issues nationwide.

“It’s never been about just stopping that pipeline,” he said.

June Sapiel, a 47-year-old member of the Penobscot Tribe in Penobscot, Maine, also rejected the idea that the protesters in North Dakota had failed.

“It’s waking people up,” she said in front of a friend’s yurt where she has been staying. “We’re going to go out there and just keep doing it.”

(Additional reporting by Timothy Mclaughlin in Chicago and Liz Hampton in Houston; Writing by Ben Klayman; Editing by Matthew Lewis)