As the US Gulf Coast continues to mature and increase in importance to the global crude market, the WTI Houston futures contract is continuously developing alongside it. The connection of domestic users and locations close to export facilities allows this contract to reflect ongoing price discovery, liquidity, and risk transfer in this essential region for the US export market.
Starting with the January 2021 contract, WTI Houston (HCL) futures can offer delivery of export quality crude directly onto a tanker via Enterprise Product Partners’ Houston Ship Channel.
Dock Allocation features:
Enterprise Products Partners L.P. (NYSE: EPD) is one of the largest midstream energy companies in the world and a leading North American provider of services linking producers and consumers a full range of hydrocarbon products, including crude oil. Assets include approximately 50,000 miles of pipelines; 260 million barrels of storage capacity for crude oil, NGLs, refined products and petrochemicals; and 14 billion cubic feet of natural gas storage capacity.
With a network of 19 ship docks along the Gulf Coast, Enterprise is the leader in crude infrastructure in the Houston area and the largest exporter of crude oil in the nation.
Through its network of pipelines, storage and marine terminals, Enterprise has the capability to aggregate more than 4 million barrels per day (BPD) of various grades of crude oil and averaged more than 800,000 BPD of exports in the second quarter of 2018 with access to approximately 45 million barrels of crude oil storage, 24 million barrels in Houston.
The ECHO terminal, which has 7.4 million barrels of crude oil storage, is connected to every refinery in the Houston area, as well as a network of pipelines from the major producing basins, terminals and import/export docks. From the Permian Basin, Enterprise transports crude oil to Houston through the Midland-to-ECHO pipeline system, which has 575,000 BPD of capacity.
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