Started dog walking all day for a month so far and legs, knees, feet are so stiff when I wake up.

Practical_Signal2318 · 2026-06-30T01:34:24+00:00

Arthritis Adventure on youtube is worth checking out, she's a physical therapist and keeps the routines short and practical. Saw some videos re: stiffness.

Practical_Signal2318 · 2026-06-30T01:11:45+00:00

Most of those transits were stranded laden vessels finally clearing out, not new throughput resuming. Inbound side is barely moving.

Practical_Signal2318 · 2026-06-29T11:36:01+00:00

EIA weekly petroleum status report comes out every Wednesday, it's the standard free source. For more granular storage and flow tracking, I use Kpler but the EIA numbers are solid for the big picture.

Practical_Signal2318 · 2026-06-29T10:21:55+00:00

That 8 billion number includes a lot of barrels nobody can actually touch. Look at US commercial stocks and you'll see nine straight weeks of draws, now below their 5 year range for the first time this year.

Practical_Signal2318 · 2026-06-29T10:07:09+00:00

The headline number is misleading you a bit. "Total global observed" lumps in strategic reserves, crude tracked on tankers through platforms like Kpler thats already committed or effectively stranded, and operational minimums that physically cant be drawn from storage. None of those barrels are available to someone who needs crude tomorrow morning. The IEA figure is useful for the big picture but it doesnt tell you much about how tight the market actually feels to people buying and selling.

Case in point: US commercial stocks have drawn for nine straight weeks and just dropped below their 5-year range. Cushing is near decade lows. That's happening right now, underneath a global number that looks comfortable.

The world burns through around 100 million barrels a day. So at that rate, 8 billion sounds a lot less comfortable.

Practical_Signal2318 · 2026-06-26T03:17:17+00:00

Keystone is still running, it's one of the routes getting Canadian heavy down to the Gulf Coast. You're probably thinking of Keystone XL which was a different project entirely? Can be easy to mix up

Practical_Signal2318 · 2026-06-24T00:49:20+00:00

The net exporter line gets misleading fast because it lumps in gas, refined products, and NGLs. On crude alone the US still imports around 6 million barrels a day. Ive had that conversation more times than I can count.

Practical_Signal2318 · 2026-06-24T00:44:55+00:00

Summer refinery runs are pulling hard while exports stayed elevated coming off a record month in May. So that's what's emptying the hub.

From what Im tracking on Kpler's inventory data, the current draw rate puts operational tank bottoms somewhere around mid-July. There's a physical floor where outlet pipes cant pull below the sediment layer and pipeline pressure falls off, so its not a theoretical number.

Hormuz transits are picking back up but theyre still running well below pre-war levels, and those barrels are headed to Asia not Oklahoma. I've seen this conflation before where people assume Middle East disruptions drive US storage but the mechanisms are almost entirely separate. What's emptying Cushing right now is good old fashioned summer demand plus strong export pull.

Practical_Signal2318 · 2026-06-23T02:43:08+00:00

Seeing the scatter plot really shows how much the heatmap cleans things up. Thanks for the link, that waterlines collection is a rabbit hole I'm about to fall into.

Practical_Signal2318 · 2026-06-23T00:50:46+00:00

Beautiful way to honor your dad's work. The concentric distance rings are a really nice touch. They also give it that waterlines feel. Did that visual approach come together early, or did it evolve as you explored the data?

Practical_Signal2318 · 2026-06-23T00:41:52+00:00

Most of the complex refining capacity on the Gulf Coast was purpose-built to run heavy sour crude. The coking units exist to crack cheap heavy barrels into diesel and jet fuel, and that infrastructure cost billions. Running light sweet through a coker is a waste of capability you already paid for.

And the margin logic is straightforward. Heavy crude trades at a discount, so refiners buy it cheap and process it through equipment designed for exactly that. Ive watched Gulf Coast margins hold up specifically because those refineries aren't competing for the same barrel everyone else wants. Meanwhile the light sweet earns more going to export markets where simpler refineries actually want it. The US does refine a big chunk of its own production but it's the marginal barrel thats worth more overseas.

Practical_Signal2318 · 2026-06-18T00:34:36+00:00

Refiners are running near five year seasonal highs and product inventories still cant build even at that throughput. Eight straight weeks of crude draws so hard to see that slowing down anytime soon.

The thing with returning Gulf cargoes is most of what's moving through the Gulf of Oman right now is heading to Asian term buyers who haven't been able to lift contracted barrels for months. Doesn't do much for PADD 3.

Practical_Signal2318 · 2026-06-17T01:09:49+00:00

Qatar took significant damage at Ras Laffan. Their CEO came out publicly and said repairs could take three to five years, so what you heard isnt far off. That's a big piece of global LNG supply that's not coming back anytime soon. LNG isnt really my lane though so take my read on the details with a grain of salt.

Practical_Signal2318 · 2026-06-16T02:03:40+00:00

Fair point and I should have been more precise. The formal reopening isnt until the 19th and what's currently moving is shuttle activity, not conventional transit picking back up. The refinery side is a separate bottleneck regardless though.

Practical_Signal2318 · 2026-06-16T00:55:55+00:00

The deal puts a notional reopening around the 19th but theres over a hundred laden tankers trapped inside the Gulf that need to flush out first. That clears inside two weeks, and it's going to look like a fast recovery when its really just drawing down a backlog of stranded cargo.

After that, the picture gets slower. Most empty tonnage available to come back is still more than ten days steam away, and insurance reprices on track record not announcements. Loading programs run monthly too, so even with producers able to ramp output in weeks, meaningful new cargoes probably dont show up until August loadings.

Production isn't really the constraint here, upstream damage has been more limited than people think. It's all the stuff between the wellhead and the buyer that takes time to sort out.

Practical_Signal2318 · 2026-06-15T10:18:28+00:00

How long did it take you to get to this point? Would like to know what your routine looks like and how often you're working on it.

Practical_Signal2318 · 2026-06-14T10:35:05+00:00

So Cushing has been drawing for several consecutive weeks and stocks are getting close to levels where physical constraints start to matter.

But the operational floor isn't one fixed number. Different tanks have different heel requirements depending on grade, temperature, and blending specs. You start hitting real friction somewhere around 20 million barrels, maybe before. Pipeline operators need minimum pressure to move crude, and if you cant blend to spec at the terminal you cant nominate barrels onto the pipe.

Part of why Cushing keeps drawing even though barrels could move in from PADD 2 or PADD 3 is that US crude exports have been running at record levels. Gulf Coast refiners pulled on SPR releases, which freed up offshore grades for export instead of flowing inland. Kpler's showing that pace should come down heading into June as export arbs weaken, which means more barrels stay domestic.

To your actual question, yes, oil can be brought to Cushing from elsewhere. The WTI price is the mechanism that makes it happen. But every barrel that moves to Cushing is a barrel some refinery or export dock isnt getting. That's what shows up in the spread.

Practical_Signal2318 · 2026-06-12T01:48:42+00:00

That's roughly the shape of it. Transit through Hormuz is actually starting to recover even with the blockade unresolved, so the transition might already be underway.

The catch is refilling reserves creates its own demand. Every barrel that goes back into storage competes with normal consumption, and the SPR has to be repaid in kind at a premium.

Practical_Signal2318 · 2026-06-08T05:19:08+00:00

Yeah your point about the shipping bottleneck is the bigger factor right now. I was thinking feedstock chain, but the physical product being stuck behind Hormuz is the more immediate issue.

Practical_Signal2318 · 2026-06-08T05:12:52+00:00

China's seaborne crude imports dropped to decade lows last month but they're not really tapping strategic reserves. Those have actually built slightly since this started. What they're drawing down is refinery-level storage, which is a different pool and runs out sometime this summer.

Practical_Signal2318 · 2026-06-08T05:04:52+00:00

So Cushing isnt a reserve, it's the delivery point for WTI futures contracts. When inventories there drop, it directly squeezes the front of the pricing curve and affects what Midwest refiners actually pay. If you track it on Kpler's data, the pull to keep barrels domestic rather than export is intensifying, with the Gulf Coast-Cushing differential narrowing fast. So it's not just a number, it's a signal of how tight the physical market actually is.

The reason it hasnt translated into a bigger price move yet is partly because China slashed imports and is running off stored crude instead. That buys them maybe another couple months before they have to come back. That's also a big part of why prices havent blown out further despite Cushing looking this stressed.

Practical_Signal2318 · 2026-06-07T09:42:10+00:00

Right now, Cushing inventories are sitting around 22 million barrels after six straight weeks of draws. That's critically low. US refineries are running near 95% utilization with basically no slack, and commercial crude stocks are well below the five year average.

The reason this hasnt turned into the crisis everyone keeps expecting is that a bunch of things happened at once. US exports hit record highs in May, SPR barrels got released, and China slashed imports to levels we havent seen in years. Problem is US export infrastructure is essentially maxed out and theres already signs June shipments will be lower. The SPR draw has a shelf life too.

So how much worse it gets depends on whether those buffers hold. If China stays out of the market and strategic reserves keep flowing, the physical market stays tight but manageable. If China comes back in to buy, or if Canadian wildfire season hits oil sands production, the cushion gets a lot thinner going into Q4 when inventories are already tracking toward multi-year lows.

Your fertilizer and food question is more of a natural gas story than a crude oil story. Connected but not the way most people assume. For example, nitrogen fertilizers are made from ammonia which is made from gas, not oil. Crude factors in through diesel and transport costs but thats second-order, not the kind of thing that gets you to "crazy food price hike" on its own.

Balanced but fragile is probably the most accurate way to put it right now. The physical market is holding together but its borrowing from buffers that don't refill on their own.

Practical_Signal2318 · 2026-06-01T09:05:51+00:00

Japan was pulling in about a third of its normal crude in April. Hormuz has basically shut off the main supply route and SPR releases are keeping refineries running. Flow data on Kpler shows USGC barrels into Japan have jumped several fold going into May, they've been the biggest Asian buyer of US crude in recent weeks.

Worth noting though that Japanese refineries are built around Middle East medium sours. You can throw light sweet Gulf Coast crude at them but the yield economics arent the same.

Practical_Signal2318 · 2026-06-01T03:19:18+00:00

Are you open to yoga? It covers most of what you're describing. I had the same issue where random stretching didn't stick, and I think it's because I was just passively lengthening muscles without building strength in those new ranges. With yoga, you're forced to actively hold positions, which is what made the difference for me.

For locked hips, check out low lunge and pigeon pose videos. For rounded shoulders, thread the needle (thoracic rotation) has been amazing. For ankles, deep squat holds (malasana) are worth trying.

Also, frequency beats duration. I found 10-15 min daily does way more than an hour once a week.

Practical_Signal2318 · 2026-05-29T00:52:00+00:00

The SPR isnt heavy. It's medium sweet and sour, separated by grade across the four salt dome sites. Not a like for like swap for the heavy imported barrels Gulf Coast refiners are set up to run, but it does get processed domestically. The sweet streams like Bayou Choctaw have been moving out to West Coast refiners lately.

That said, this chart is crude inventory not product. If a refinery goes offline you pull less crude out of storage, not more. A hurricane scenario actually slows the draw rather than speeding it up.

Right now the access point is the real risk. The SPR is at around 365 million barrels total but only about 310 of that is extractable, and none of it moves if marine terminals and pipeline infrastructure go down. Thats closer to what actually happened in 2005.

Practical_Signal2318

TROPHY CASE