v2.4.0.8
ORGANIZATION AND OPERATIONS
 12 Months Ended
Dec. 31, 2013
Organization, Consolidation and Presentation of Financial Statements [Abstract]  
ORGANIZATION AND OPERATIONS
ORGANIZATION AND OPERATIONS
Organization
NuStar Energy L.P. (NuStar Energy) (NYSE: NS) is engaged in the terminalling and storage of petroleum products, the transportation of petroleum products and anhydrous ammonia, and the marketing of petroleum products. Unless otherwise indicated, the terms “NuStar Energy L.P.,” “the Partnership,” “we,” “our” and “us” are used in this report to refer to NuStar Energy L.P., to one or more of our consolidated subsidiaries or to all of them taken as a whole. NuStar GP Holdings, LLC (NuStar GP Holdings) (NYSE: NSH) owns our general partner, Riverwalk Logistics, L.P., and owns a 14.9% total interest in us as of December 31, 2013.
Operations
We conduct our operations through our subsidiaries, primarily NuStar Logistics, L.P. (NuStar Logistics) and NuStar Pipeline Operating Partnership L.P. (NuPOP). We have three business segments: storage, pipeline and fuels marketing.
Storage. We own terminal and storage facilities in the United States, Canada, Mexico, the Netherlands, including St. Eustatius in the Caribbean, the United Kingdom and Turkey providing approximately 84.8 million barrels of storage capacity. Our terminals and storage facilities provide storage and handling services on a fee basis for petroleum products, specialty chemicals and other liquids, including crude oil and other feedstocks.
Pipeline. We own common carrier refined product pipelines in Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, New Mexico, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota, North Dakota and Minnesota covering approximately 5,463 miles, consisting of the Central West System, the East Pipeline and the North Pipeline. The East and North Pipelines also include 21 terminals providing storage capacity of 4.9 million barrels, and the East Pipeline includes two tank farms providing storage capacity of 1.4 million barrels. In addition, we own a 2,000 mile anhydrous ammonia pipeline located in Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa and Nebraska. We also own 1,180 miles of crude oil pipelines in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado and Illinois, as well as associated crude oil terminal and storage facilities providing storage capacity of 3.4 million barrels in Texas and Oklahoma that are located along the crude oil pipelines. We charge tariffs on a per barrel basis for transporting refined products, crude oil and other feedstocks in our refined product and crude oil pipelines and on a per ton basis for transporting anhydrous ammonia in our ammonia pipeline.
Fuels Marketing. In 2013, we changed the name of the “Asphalt and Fuels Marketing” segment to the “Fuels Marketing” segment since this name more accurately reflects the operations that remain after our deconsolidation of NuStar Asphalt LLC in 2012 and the sale of our fuels refinery in San Antonio, Texas (the San Antonio Refinery) on January 1, 2013. Within our fuels marketing operations, we purchase crude oil and refined petroleum products for resale.
Our fuels marketing segment includes our fuels marketing operations and, through September 28, 2012, our asphalt operations. On September 28, 2012, we sold a 50% ownership interest in NuStar Asphalt LLC, previously a wholly owned subsidiary, and started reporting our remaining investment using the equity method of accounting. Therefore, the results of our asphalt operations are reported in “Equity in (loss) earnings of joint ventures” in the consolidated statements of income beginning on September 28, 2012. In addition, we have presented the results of operations for the San Antonio Refinery and related assets, previously reported in the fuels marketing and pipeline segments, as discontinued operations for all periods presented. See Note 5 for additional discussion.
The activities of the fuels marketing segment expose us to the risk of fluctuations in commodity prices, which has a direct impact on the segment’s results of operations. We enter into derivative contracts to attempt to mitigate the effect of commodity price fluctuations.