Traders Spy on Oklahoma Hub With Satellites, Sensors and Infrared Cameras
October 2nd, 2012Via: NPR:
The bottleneck of crude stored in Cushing, Okla., has become the country’s “biggest bank vault of oil,” Businessweek’s Matthew Phillips writes. And it’s only getting bigger.
The clog — which is pushing down the price of West Texas Intermediate crude from Oklahoma, creating a gap with its international rival, Brent — is making traders rich.
Information is everything, and traders are using high-tech extremes to extract data about oil storage and flow from the high-security oil hub. Photographers in helicopters? That’s relatively low-level when it comes to these storage tank spy games, Businessweek reports:
Recently, photographers have started using infrared cameras to peer inside the tanks. The difference in heat can often show where the oil line is.
Aerial photography is common. A bird’s-eye view allows analysts to estimate storage levels by calculating the angle of shadows cast by massive tanks’ floating roofs.
And that’s just the beginning.
A private “energy intelligence” company called Genscape is funding much of the high-tech surveillance, reports Businessweek, whose parent company — Bloomberg — also does their own Cushing surveillance by way of twice-weekly satellite flyovers.
Research Credit: rs
