Flashback! from 2013:
Oil-by-rail pioneer U.S. Development Group cashing up, not out
NEW YORK |
Emboldened by the early success, the company ramped up its
investments in the crude-by-rail business, reckoning - wrongly - that
the best bet would be in Canada, where producers were grappling
with how to ship viscous oil sands by pipeline.
"The timing was not right. They were all about Keystone and
pipeline growth," he said of early talks with producers.
Instead, USD built a receiving terminal in St. James, Louisiana,
the trading point for the Gulf Coast's main light, sweet crude,
eventually expanding it to one of the country's biggest, capable of
unloading two unit trains at 130,000 bpd.
It went on to build up a stake in nearly every major shale play,
including North Dakota, where it helped to break BNSF's early
advantage, and Colorado's Niobrara and Texas' Eagle Ford.
It was a good bet because the volume of U.S. crude oil shipped by
rail has surged from next to nothing in 2010 to as much as 750,000
barrels per day (bpd), equivalent to about a tenth of the country's
production. Total U.S. oil production has reached the highest in
over two decades.
FULL STEAM AHEAD
The company's latest foray is into the crude-by-rail business
in Hardisty, Alberta, where together with Gibson Energy Inc
(GEI.TO) USD will build one of three terminals capable of
handling unit trains.
USD is the company that is proposing a
Crude Oil terminal near Bowerman Basin.
USD Group withdraws proposal to expand Alberta oil-by-rail facility
Planned US coal ports:
a swift trip from vital
to irrelevant
10th February 2016
via Wood Magazine by Andy Roberts
Three short years ago, the conventional wisdom was both that growing thermal coal demand in Asia couldn’t be met by regional suppliers, and that low-cost coal from the US would fill the breech. Several new coal ports, notably in Oregon and Washington, were already in the early stages of permit approval, hoping to help fill this void.
The intervening three years have made clear what a miscalculation this was. Opposition to the major projects – Gateway Pacific, Millennium and Port Morrow – has been effective, led by a broad coalition of environmental groups, tribal nations and local and national governments . But as challenging as this was for port developers, the larger problem has been economic.
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