The Permian still has room to grow crude oil takeaway without another greenfield pipeline, but the candidates for a brownfield project are shrinking. East Daley Analytics is aware of only two confirmed options to expand existing oil pipelines to the Gulf Coast, leaving the industry with less flexibility to quickly grow supply.
Cactus III Pipeline presents the most relevant opportunity. Plains All American (PAA) plans to bring a 75 Mb/d expansion of Cactus III online by the end of August, raising capacity to 725 Mb/d to the Corpus Christi market. More importantly, the former EPIC system was built as a 30-inch line, and EPIC previously identified a maximum design capacity of ~1 MMb/d.
Plains now describes Cactus III as the “last expandable Permian long-haul pipe” to the US Gulf Coast. In PAA’s 2Q26 update, management said additional expansion phases are looking more economic than originally expected but would require customer commitments.
The catch is that upside in Cactus III headroom will be costly to add. As part of the $1.5B EPIC Crude acquisition, Plains agreed to pay earnouts to the former asset owners if it pursues near-term expansions. These include $157MM to Ares tied to incremental capacity sanctioned above 650 Mb/d through YE28, and a separate $193MM earnout to Kinetik (KNTK) and Diamondback Energy (FANG) if PAA approves projects before YE27 to lift capacity past 900 Mb/d.
The earnouts pose a disincentive for PAA to pursue an ambitious timeline to expand Cactus III, even if the corridor into Corpus Christi materially tightens. Still, Plains said the current project is highly economic, and that future phases are looking better than it had initially underwritten. This leaves Cactus III as the top candidate to meet additional Permian growth.
Gray Oak Pipeline is the other option. Enbridge (ENB) recently completed a 120 Mb/d expansion, bringing Gray Oak’s capacity to 1.02 MMb/d into Corpus Christi. ENB says a “further modest capacity expansion” is achievable when demand develops.
Beyond Cactus III and Gray Oak, the remaining brownfield opportunities become much less clear. Several Permian systems have already used much of the hydraulic flexibility that was originally baked into their designs. BridgeTex, for example, has increased capacity from roughly 300 Mb/d to 440 Mb/d through pump and equipment upgrades. The projects demonstrate that the 20-inch system was expandable, but also suggest that a meaningful portion of low-cost headroom has already been captured.
Longhorn is another example. The 18-inch system has undergone extensive pump-station additions and flow-improver work to raise throughput well above its original configuration, leaving further upside in doubt. Midland-to-ECHO 1 followed a similar path, with owner Enterprise Products (EPD) increasing capacity from an initially planned 450 Mb/d to as much as 620 Mb/d. Notably, EPD’s recent response to Permian growth was to return Midland-to-ECHO 2 to crude service, rather than push the pipe’s capacity higher.
Wink-to-Webster is the X factor in the Permian. The pipe is newer, and built with a large-diameter design that should provide more hydraulic flexibility than older systems such as Longhorn or BridgeTex. ExxonMobil (XOM) already uses drag-reducing agents and power optimization on the system but has not publicly identified additional capacity above the current design, so any remaining headroom is unproven.
See East Daley’s Crude Hub Model for more information. We view Cactus III as the only obvious brownfield candidate for material Permian long-haul expansion, with Gray Oak offering smaller incremental upside. To truly raise the bar, midstream will need to look to more capital-intensive projects involving substantial pump work, looping or a new greenfield pipe. – Keland Rumsey Tickers: ENB, EPD, FANG, KNTK, PAA, XOM.
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