FYI – this WTI-Brent drop just out yesterday as an example of how quickly things can & do change in the oil & refining industry. And a good reason for refinery planners not to be lemmings who blindly follow the pundits who haven’t really given the Shale Crude-Bitumen Crude-Complex Refinery Crude Blending much more than superficial study.
Also not mentioned but the vast majority of all Bakken/Shale Crude movements are into the simple/cracking or sweet crude refineries and not the more complex coking refineries. The economics of backing out a discounted heavy crude and loafing the coker to take in more expensive lite crude to make more product never last for long. And as exports show this more case of lite shale crude backing out lite imports & higher cost domestic lites.
And there are as yet unasked questions around the quality of the lighter shale crude and its products that hold many of the same issues encountered when Bitumen crudes began to be processed and concentrated in the complex coking refineries.
Regards
