Buffer or bottleneck?

Earl Crochet at Crochet Midstream Consulting talks about how energy policy and world events are affecting storage tanks in the short term In the worldwide energy markets, storage tanks are often treated as background infrastructure – necessary, expensive and largely static. In the pipeline world, they are often referred to derisively as ‘wide spots on the pipe’. When governments change policy, when conflict disrupts trade routes, when weather shuts in production or when price signals shift unexpectedly, storage tanks become one of the first places where market stress shows up. Volumes rise or fall, storage duration changes, and operational pressure increases across terminals, refineries and distribution networks. This short-term sensitivity matters because storage sits at the intersection of supply, transportation, refining and end-use demand. A policy decision made in one capital, or a shipping disruption thousands of miles away, can quickly alter how tanks are used in another region. In some cases, tanks can help buffer disruption by holding surplus volumes until flows return to normal. In others, they become bottlenecks when product cannot move out fast enough, when...