The Wall St. Journal reports that “the rising tide of North American oil is lifting a lot of barges, as energy companies increasingly turn to rivers and coastal waterways to get U.S. and Canadian crude to refineries.”  

“Oil floating on barges from the Midwest down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico coast, for example, is up 13-fold since 2010, as companies find alternate routes where pipelines don’t exist or have sufficient capacity. Nearly five million barrels of crude a month is being sent by barge south after companies pump it from North Dakota’s Bakken Shale and, increasingly, Canada’s oil sands, according to federal data.”