WTI Crude · Origin deep dive

Cushing, Oklahoma is a landlocked pipeline and tank-farm hub with some ninety million barrels of storage capacity.

Domestic sweet spec around 40-44 API and under 0.42% sulphur defines NYMEX deliverable WTI at Cushing.

Inbound Basin, DAPL and Cushing-bound pipes meet outbound Seaway and Marketlink lines to the Gulf; storage economics rule.

Midcon refiners, Gulf Coast refiners via pipe, and financial players whose positioning shows up in tank levels.

Refinery turnaround seasons in spring and autumn build Cushing stocks; summer driving season draws them down.

Cushing stock swings toward tank bottoms or tank tops, pipeline reversals and rate changes, and contango-backwardation storage plays.

North Sea BFOET grades load at Sullom Voe, Hound Point and Norwegian terminals, with WTI Midland cargoes from the USGC now deliverable.

Light sweet basket including Forties, Ekofisk, Troll and Midland; the most-competitive grade sets Dated on quality-adjusted terms.

Aframax and suezmax liftings on published loading programmes; Platts window trades and CFDs structure the forward curve.

European refiners, Asian buyers on the arb, and the global derivatives complex that prices two-thirds of world crude off Brent.

North Sea maintenance in summer trims BFOET supply, while transatlantic WTI flows smooth what used to be sharper seasonal tightness.

Brent-WTI spread driving Midland inclusion economics, North Sea decline and field outages, and benchmark-reform debates over deliverable grades.

Corpus Christi (including Ingleside's VLCC-capable berths) and Houston-area docks export Midland-spec barrels.

WTI Midland spec of roughly 40-44 API, low sulphur and tight metals limits, quality-policed since joining the Brent basket.

Permian pipelines (Cactus, EPIC, Gray Oak) feed export docks; aframax loadings with reverse-lightering to VLCCs offshore.

European refiners pricing it in Dated Brent, plus Korean, Indian and Chinese refiners on the eastern arb.

Flat export cadence with arb-window pulses; Permian production growth, not season, drives the structural flow.

Pipeline capacity versus Permian output, Houston-Midland spread swings, quality giveaways from blending, and freight moves shifting the arb.

Mars blend flows via the Mars pipeline from deepwater Gulf of Mexico platforms to Clovelly/LOOP storage in Louisiana.

Medium sour around 29-30 API and roughly 2% sulphur, the USGC sour benchmark priced at a discount to sweet WTI.

Offshore pipeline to LOOP caverns with onward pipe to Gulf refiners; occasional export cargoes clear surplus.

USGC coking refineries geared for sour feed, plus Asian refiners when the sour arb opens and SPR repurchases when Washington bids.

Hurricane season June-November periodically shuts in production and spikes the differential against seasonal refinery demand.

Hurricane shut-ins, SPR purchase programmes bidding sours, OPEC+ sour-barrel supply swings and new deepwater project ramp-ups.

Origin rail terminals around Epping and Trenton, North Dakota load unit trains when pipeline space or spreads justify.

Light sweet 40-43 API Bakken with high light-ends content, subject to Rvp conditioning rules for rail safety.

DAPL is the workhorse takeaway; crude-by-rail to East and West Coast refiners is the swing route priced off spread economics.

East Coast refiners like PBF and Phillips 66 Bayway historically, West Coast refiners, and Midcontinent refineries via pipe.

Winter blizzards and extreme cold curtail well operations and rail loading, widening differentials in cold snaps.

DAPL legal-shutdown risk, rail-versus-pipe economics, winter weather curtailments and basin decline setting takeaway slack.