"As in the current crisis, liquidity is king," Greg Garland, chairman and CEO of Phillips 66, said during the company's first quarter conference call in early May.

Like the upstream sector, the us midstream sector is struggling to maintain liquidity in response to unprecedented market conditions. As oil and gas producers cut budgets and drilled Wells, the collapse in oil prices and demand caused by the outbreak caught up with us energy infrastructure plans.

In response to anticipated low throughput and in an effort to maintain liquidity, Phillips 66 and other midstream OPERATORS in the US have recently delayed the commissioning and final investment decisions of several pipelines and scaled back capacity on others.

As of June 4, five pipelines were suspended in the United States, as well as those to Mexico, according to the EIA's latest update of the Liquid Pipeline Project Database.

A total of 14 crude oil pipelines were completed last year, up from 11 in 2018, as midstream operators seized the opportunity to expand pipeline infrastructure to move oil production from the Permian basin to refineries and export centers along the U.S. Gulf Coast.

As of April, three oil pipeline projects had been completed, according to the EIA's database. These are new pipeline projects, not extensions to existing pipelines.