Last Updated on May 3, 2020, 9:53 AM AST by Anthony Morris
The slogan of the Cushing oil hub, “Cushing, Oklahoma: Pipeline Crossroads of the World” does not exaggerate. Cushing, a town with a population of several thousand, has lately become a media star as the oil world scrambles for the storage of excess oil.
However, this newly made media star has a message for the world, and the message is that the tanks are near to filling up.
Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury Secretary, said earlier this week that the Government was working on expanding the available oil storage space by around several hundred barrels.
He did not provide the details, but it is expected that some of this newly expanded capacity may be located at the Cushing hub.
Cushing, Oklahoma, is the spot of physical delivery for the oil which is bought and sold in the West Texas Intermediate futures contracts.
In other words, if someone buys WTI and they want to take physical delivery, Cushing is where the oil would be delivered.
The complex is awe-inspiring.
The compound has a maximum storage capacity of around 90 million barrels across 15 large storage terminals, Cushing is also the home to a network of almost two dozen pipelines, which have a combined inbound and outbound capacity of over 6.5 million BPD.
It is noteworthy that this capacity of the compound has been expanding.
It was reported last year that there were six new pipeline projects in Cushing which were at the stage of planning and that these projects would be adding 2 million BPD of the total outbound capacity of Cushing by the end of the coming year.
At the time when this was reported, Genscape’s director of oil market business development, Hillary Stevenson, had said that not all of the six pipeline projects would really get built, but around 750,000 BPD would be built.
The even more important news was that there were an additional 4.5 million barrels in additional capacity which were coming to Cushing.
Anthony Morris covers stories related to politics and regional developments. His in-depth reporting about governance and reforms makes him stand out in regional journalism, with a deep analysis of political trends and their impact on Caribbean communities.
