A few years back, crude-by-rail (CBR) “emerged as the go-to fix that enabled pipeline-constrained shale regions to move fast-increasing volumes of oil to market,” writes RBN Energy LLC analyst Housley Carr in Slow Train Coming: What’s Next for CBR. “But changes in the market—lower oil prices, slowing/declining production, new pipeline capacity—have been challenging and undermining CBR.”
Northwest crude oil refiners are still shipping significant volumes of crude from North Dakota’s Bakken region, RBN analyst Sandy Fielden discusses in “Slow Train Coming: Crude By Rail To Northwest Refineries Still Resilient.”
As RBN Energy LLC analyst Sandy Fielden describes in Slow Train Coming: The Decline and Fall of East Coast Crude by Rail, the economics of shipping crude oil out of North Dakota’s Bakken region, compared to importing equivalent crude, are having a detrimental impact on crude-by-rail (CBR) shipments to the East Coast.
Increased pressure on North Dakota crude oil producers is “finally” putting the brakes on Bakken crude production, writes RBN Energy LLC analyst Sandy Fielden in Is It All Over Now? Producers Lose Their Appetite For Bakken Crude Output.
There is “big potential” to expand crude by rail shipments to West Coast ports and to California, but building the infrastructure “has proven painstakingly slow,” writes RBN Energy LLC analyst Rusty Braziel.
Bakken crude oil hauled in unit trains may disappear by 2017, according to an analysis conducted by RBN Energy LLC.
