Texas is leading the way in the gulf coast energy revolution. As Alison Sider, Dan Strumpf and Ben Lefebvre of The Wall Street Journal report:
The pipelines, all set to come online by the end of next year, mark a new phase in the U.S. oil boom.
Hydraulic fracturing has pushed U.S. oil output to its highest level in 17 years, but without adequate pipelines, much of the crude has been trapped at storage facilities, including domestically produced light, sweet crude at the massive storage hub in Cushing, Okla.
Because that Oklahoma crude is relatively stranded, its price is depressed compared with prices of oil stored in other parts of the U.S. and in Europe. But with the new pipelines, as well as increased use of rail cars and barges to move crude, Cushing prices are expected to rebound.
Light, sweet crude at Cushing is now trading at a discount of about $6 a barrel from imported European Brent crude, but far less than the $20 discount in February.
