From the wellhead of the lease to the refinery, the crude oil supply chain can be complex. Our Lease Acquisition and Marketing organization purchases crude from producers at the wellhead or at trade locations, and then sells it to a refiner or other purchaser. We strive to keep our purchases and sales balanced, with each purchased barrel matched to a barrel sold, thereby minimizing commodity price exposure.
Presently we purchase approximately 225,000 barrels of crude oil each day from approximately 3,400 producers in Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, New Mexico, Michigan, Louisiana and Kentucky. We also purchase in bulk quantities at major pipeline interconnections and trading centers.
We aggregate the crude oil we purchase from individual leases into trunk pipelines utilizing our gathering pipelines and our truck fleet. The crude oil then flows on these pipelines on its path to the purchaser. Our inter-connected network of pipelines and terminals allows us to move crude oil through the supply chain in a cost-effective manner. Our extensive gathering system and truck lines, combined with our crude oil terminaling assets, provide excellent flexibility to take advantage of many different market place opportunities. We have the ability to purchase and market various grades of crude oil to meet individual refinery specifications.
We have the ability to deliver to multiple trade centers and over 25 refineries via our assets at Nederland, Longview, Wortham, Corsicana, and Colorado City, Texas; and Cushing, Oklahoma.
Our flexibility allows us to capture additional market opportunity when the crude market is in Contango (the price of crude oil today is lower than the price of the crude oil in the future.) We can capture the pricing difference by purchasing prompt month barrels and selling future month barrels simultaneously, with no price risk. The prompt barrels are stored in our tanks until they need to be delivered against the future sale.