U.S. Looks to Canada for More Oil

Pipelines Reverse Flow As Imports Slow
From Latin America

The future of the U.S. oil industry arrived last year in Cushing, Oklahoma, moving along at three kilometers an hour.

It was the first crude from the Albertan oil sands to reach as far south as the giant Cushing pipeline hub, one of the locations where global oil prices are set. To get there, the crude traveled through a pipeline that for decades carried oil in the opposite direction.


A month later, a second pipeline was reversed and Canadian crude reached all the way down to southeast Texas, the world’s largest cluster of petrochemical plants and refineries and the traditional front door for much of the U.S.’s oil supplies.

The pipelines, operated by Enbridge Inc. and Exxon Mobil Corp., represent long-term, multibillion-dollar investments in infrastructure to enable Canadian crude to keep cars running on U.S. roads. The shift requires billions of dollars in investment and could clash long-term with efforts to curb global warming.

Wall St. Journal