28 comments on Taking a look at the First Quarter graphs
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
28 comments on Taking a look at the First Quarter graphs
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
Search The Oil Drum with Google
Support The Oil Drum
Recently on TOD:World
TOD:Campfire
- Thanksgiving Open Campfire Thread
- How Relocalization Worked
- How to Set Up and Run a Bicycle Repair Company
TOD:Europe
- Unique Times -- and the Future
- Peak Gold, Easier to Model than Peak Oil? - Part I
- Carbon Capture and Storage
TOD:Canada
- In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
- The Round-Up: October 24, 2008
- Compressed Air Energy Storage - How viable is it?
TOD:Australia/NZ
- The Bullroarer - Friday 27th November 2009
- International Energy Agency calls 'Peak' on OECD Oil Demand
- Australian Senate: Peak Oil motion defeated 31:6
TOD:Net Energy
Blogroll
Energy Sites
- The Coming Global Oil Crisis
- Die Off
- Dry Dipstick
- Energy Bulletin
- From the Wilderness
- Life After the Oil Crash
- Peak Oil Crisis
- Peak Oil News and Message Boards
- Powerswitch
- Rigzone
- Matthew Simmons
- Wolf at the Door
Environment & Sustainability Sites
- The Daily Green
- EcoGeek
- Eco Street
- Green Car Congress
- Green Options
- green.alltop.com
- Gristmill
- RealClimate
- Sustainablog
- Treehugger
- WorldChanging
Blogs
- Casaubon's Book
- Cleantech Blog
- Clusterf
k Nation (Jim Kunstler) - The Cost of Energy
- David Strahan
- Early Warning
- The Energy Blog
- European Tribune
- GraphOilology
- Health After Oil
- jeffvail.net
- Mobjectivist
- Peak Energy (Australia)
- Peak Energy (USA)
- R-Squared
- Resource Insights
Finance & Economics Blogs
- The Big Picture
- Calculated Risk
- The Crash Course
- Ecological Economics
- Econbrowser
- Environmental Economics
- Infectious Greed
- The Mess That Greenspan Made
- Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis
Organizations
Peak Oil Primers
Beware email scams!
Beware email scams claiming to be from this site. We do not have any job openings. If anyone contacts you about a job at The Oil Drum, do not reply to them, and definitely do not give them any personal information or send them money. Read more here.
“He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils, for time is the greatest innovator.”
—Francis Bacon, Essays
User login
Contact
- Content: editors at theoildrum dot com
- Tech support: support at theoildrum dot com
Personnel
- Editors: Nate Hagens, Gail the Actuary, Prof. Goose
- DrumBeat Editor: Leanan
- Contributors: ace, Engineer-Poet, Heading Out, jeffvail, JoulesBurn, Sam Foucher, Robert Rapier
- TOD:Campfire: Glenn, Jason Bradford
- TOD:Europe: Chris Vernon, Euan Mearns, Francois Cellier, Jerome a Paris, Luís de Sousa, Rembrandt, Rune Likvern, Ugo Bardi
- TOD:Canada: benk, Libelle
- TOD:ANZ: Big Gav, Phil Hart, aeldric
- Emeritus: Stuart Staniford
- Technician: Super G
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
GAIA Host Collective
Thank you once again for the sigificant amount of work you've done in putting this information into a comprehensible form. I have a few comments and thoughts I would like to share with all of you, and please tell me whether I have any foundation in them or if I am completely wrong.
If I were running a large refinery, I think it would be rather convenient to go ahead and perform any and all deferred maintenance at this point (that I have been putting off for the past year) for a couple of reasons:
1. I get the impression that the refineries have been running all out to keep up with demand, hence maintenance is going to be a big issue in keeping these complexes online.
2. It would be better to hold onto all that crude and refine it at a later time, as the end products, such as gasoline and distillates, will bring me a significantly higher price if I just wait a few months before I begin production again in earnest.
Now, I am by no means a conspiracy theorist, but I think Exxon-Mobil and Chevron-Texaco (that is 4 major oil companies that merged to become 2 really big ones) would not hesitate to exploit such a scenario, I have to think that they would not mind the profits from such a course. However, this whole sweet vs sour crude thing is far beyond my area of expertise (paramedic and Emergency Room RN. Is it possible that the majors have been stocking up on heavy crude only to have no other options available (ie heavy sour crude is better than not having any crude oil at all)? A question I would like to pose is it possible that during the routine maintenance now going at these refineries, is it possible to convert the production process to accomadate all of the heavy/sour crude now on the market, or would this entail such a re-engineering of the basic process that I would have to build entirely new refinery? Seeing as currently no one is building any new refineries in the US at present, the latter would seem not to be occuring in the near future.
How much more difficult is 'cracking' heavy sour vs sweet light crude? (Man, I love that term. It's so Macho!)
As always, I would appreciate the TOD community's input on this.
Subkommander Dred
The primary reason for doing it now is because the weather is better than normal, and typically we have been able to build up some stocks through the winter.
Is it possible that the majors have been stocking up on heavy crude only to have no other options available (ie heavy sour crude is better than not having any crude oil at all)?
If a refinery is configured for it, they are probably stocking up on heavy because the price differentials are very large. At current prices heavy sour crude makes a lot more money than light sweet.
A question I would like to pose is it possible that during the routine maintenance now going at these refineries, is it possible to convert the production process to accomadate all of the heavy/sour crude now on the market, or would this entail such a re-engineering of the basic process that I would have to build entirely new refinery?
You wouldn't have to build a new refinery, but it isn't something you could slap in during a spring turnaround. It requires significant modifications, and hundreds of millions in capital (coker and hydrotreater for sure).
RR
As a doomer, I guess I'm predisposed for this to conjure in my mind the old Hee Haw song, "Gloom, despair and agony on me... if it weren't for bad crude I'd have no crude at all..."