David Uberti and Benoît Morenne of The Wall Street Journal tells us the pipelines to Corpus Christi, Texas, are near capacity as U.S. oil production approaches records. They write (abridged):
The U.S. has transformed global markets by boosting crude-oil exports more than 30-fold over the past decade. Much of the boom hinges on Corpus Christi Bay.
In the first four months of 2023, about half of the country’s 4.1 million barrels of daily shipments abroad was loaded onto skyscraper-size tankers from this stretch of Texas coastline, destined to become fuel for overseas travelers or factories.
That gusher of supply has helped blunt the increase in prices from recent production cuts by Saudi Arabia and Russia. In Europe, oil and natural gas shipped from the Gulf Coast have backstopped the continent as it weaned itself off Russian energy after the outbreak of the war on Ukraine.
Read more here.
