Energy Transfer Partners said on Thursday it plans to build a crude pipeline from the Permian basin in Texas to the Houston Ship Channel and Nederland, Texas, which will have an initial capacity of up to 600,000 barrels per day (bpd). The pipeline will be “easily expandable” to 1 million bpd, in order to serve growing export markets at coastal ports, the company said during a first quarter earnings conference call. It is likely to come online by 2020. Surging crude output from the Permian basin, the biggest oilfield in the United States and the source of most of the country’s shale crude, is straining the region’s infrastructure. Pipelines are running full, sending crude prices there to their weakest level against benchmark futures in three and a half years. “The almost historical widening of that basis will certainly help our margins in the […]