EAI, Inc. covers Latin American production, refining, and crude export potential providing insights into each country and drivers for supporting and expanding both upstream production and downstream refining projects. This bottom-up work is integrated into a composite outlook for LAM crude production, internal processing and likely export patterns in consideration of the U.S. as well as non-Western Hemisphere markets.
Heavy Crude Outlook
EAI, Inc. has continued and expanded its assessment of the growing Latin American region which has and will continue to have profound impacts on the U.S. and Canadian crude market as well as its refined product market. With Chinese investment and loans in Venezuela and continued decline of Mexican Maya crude coupled with increasing heavy crude refining capability (albeit-slower than advertised), EAI, Inc. has bounded likely evolving heavy crude balances integrating Western Canada, all regional U.S. markets and the outlook for net Latin America supply availability. This has major impacts on pipeline logistics and pricing relationships across all crude grades.
Light Petroleum Dynamics
The LAM downstream market represents the largest incremental market for U.S. light products and, with the U.S. light crude market wall rapidly approaching (North American Light and Medium Crude Market Wall below) will impact the Gulf Coast’s ability to ramp-up crude runs and support growing light product exports which are roughly 1400 MBPD (gasoline and distillate).
Brazilian Pre-Salt Santos Basin
Brazil’s Santos Basin activity is the newest and one of the biggest resource plays in the Western Hemisphere. Some of the production streams from this area are medium gravity and low sulfur with relatively low TAN levels. Brazil’s two major refinery projects are focused on processing more traditional heavy crude from the Campos Basin. The net supply of the Santos Basin crude pools available for the U.S. market could rival the Eagle Ford and Bakken in size and compete for some of the same refining markets.