A shipment from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve was delivered to California this month for the first time, ship-tracking service Kpler reported. The arrival underscores changing trade patterns and shipping routes after the Iran war disrupted supplies of Middle Eastern crude.
California had imported roughly 230,000 barrels per day from the Middle East last year, the tracking service noted, and options to replace that supply have been constrained by competing demand from Asia. The SPR movement to the West Coast therefore signals adjustments by market participants to address those shifts in supply availability.
Kpler detailed the logistics of the delivery. A large supertanker discharged the SPR crude to two smaller vessels, which then carried the cargoes onward to California refineries. The bulk of the load - approximately 460,000 barrels of Bayou Choctaw Sweet crude - was forwarded to Chevron's Richmond refinery. An additional 50,000 barrels of the same grade were delivered to Chevron's El Segundo refinery, according to bills of lading cited by Kpler.
The voyage included multiple handoffs across the Panama transit corridor. The tanker Red Moon took on nearly 980,000 barrels of Bayou Choctaw Sweet in Louisiana and unloaded its cargo at the Atlantic Terminal on Panama's east coast in early May, Kpler reported. Chevron was listed as the seller on that movement.
From there, a 131 km pipeline carries crude from the east coast to the Pacific Terminal on Panama's west coast. At the Pacific Terminal, the supertanker Pascagoula Voyager - chartered by Chevron - loaded about 2 million barrels of crude, including co-loading of Guyana's Unity Gold crude, and sailed for the U.S. West Coast, the ship-tracking service said.
The sequence outlined by Kpler shows a multi-stage logistics chain: loading in the U.S. Gulf, discharge and overland/underland transit across Panama, re-loading at the Pacific Terminal, and an ocean voyage to California with mid-sea lightering to deliver smaller parcels to refineries. The movements were recorded in bills of lading and ship-tracking data cited by the service.
Context and note: The details above are drawn from the ship-tracking service's reporting on the specific shipments and associated transport legs. Where Kpler cited bills of lading or listed sellers and charterers, those elements are reflected here.