Oil production in the fastest-growing U.S. shale play, the Permian, continues to boom, while takeaway capacity has not kept up. Pipeline availability issues have led to a major discount on West-Texas crude . A growing amount of Midland crude oil gets stranded as producers face bottlenecks shipping the oil to the Gulf Coast refineries and export terminals. So thin has become pipeline capacity that the spot price of Midland, Texas, crude was trading early this week at a discount of nearly $16 a barrel to the grade in Houston. This discount is now large enough to cover the cost of sending Midland crude oil by rail, as crude by rail typically costs $6 to $8 a barrel. Shipping Permian oil in railcars to Houston would in theory bring oil traders around $8 a barrel profit, Bloomberg’s Sheela Tobben writes. There hasn’t been a surge in crude-by-rail activity, but inquiries […]