May 4--The United States has been concerned for many years about the influx of foreign oil, mostly from the Middle East into the United States. But now, a new concern from Canada is beginning to worry some oil producers, and, led by Enid's Harold Hamm, they are taking steps to fight it.

The Domestic Energy Partnership Alliance is an organization created three months ago as a vehicle for oil and gas companies to combat the arrival of millions of barrels of foreign oil through pipelines into Cushing, which has the largest storage capacity in the world.

"We felt one overriding need is addressing the crude oil values in our part of the country and perhaps throughout the country in the last six-to-eight months," said Mickey Thompson, a spokesman for DEPA.

Last fall, in context with falling oil prices, the price of oil in middle America fell more sharply as compared to oil in other markets. Historically, Oklahoma Sweet crude is sold on the world market at the same price as West Texas Intermediate, which is the benchmark for purposes of trading oil on the commodities market. Oil producers began to see a differential in the crude oil market, when North Sea crude was valued with significant savings over Okla-homa oil stored in Cushing.

"The storage problem worldwide, particularly in the United States and especially at Cushing, has become severe," Thompson said. "When storage reaches near maximum capacity, it devalues someones oil, in this case ours."

Thompson said it seems counterintuitive the best quality oil, closest to the pricing point, is marginalized by the storage and market factors. The issue was first noticed by Enid's Harold Hamm, CEO of Continental Resources who has large production in Montana and Wyoming. A letter from Hamm states there is a challenge brought about by record amounts of crude oil in storage and the flip-slop of New York Stock Ex-change oil prices compared to other pricing points in the U.S. and around the world. That has left crude oil producers with negative price differential from $6 to $20.

Hamm and others started looking for reasons other than storage capacity, and they discovered what is filling capacity in pipelines from the north, one in particular, that is bringing 150,000 to 200,000 barrels a day of Canadian oil into Cushing.

That in itself is a problem, but Thompson said it is coupled with the reality a company called TransCanada and their partners, Conoco-Phillips, already have received approval to build a pipeline from Alberta, Canada, to Cushing that will carry another half million barrels of oil a day into this market. The U.S.