Quote:
Originally Posted by Sooner or later
They can make the change but it isn't just turning a switch. Yes, heavy crude is cheaper.
The problem isn't with the refiners. It is with harsh Cali regs that make spending money to update refineries or build pipelines unprofitable.
If they did switch to plentiful light sweet where will they get the light sweet from? You ain't gotz any pipelines to bring the sweet into the state. Most of Cali and Alaska crude is mid to heavy grade. So they have to tanker in the shortfall of heavy from the ME.
You all have built yourself an energy island and the blame rests on your leaderships shoulders.
Switching to light crude refinery tactics would lead to idle refineries because they wouldn't have the light crude to refine.
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There are many refiners on the west coast that were built for just one thing: to run ANS. Alaskan north slope crude.
it is medium spec. gravity, not too sour, and it is fairly easy to turn into finished products.
I've been inside 4 of them along the west coast that were originally built for that porpoise.
But ANS is running out, because the wackos protest drilling in places they've never seen or heard of or been. Flow through the trans-Alaska pipeline has been steadily drying up.
So one by one, those refineries have convertws to run the heavy stuff. Building delayed coker units, added more sulfur recovery capacity, more hydrotreaters, etc
The majority of refiners on the west coast have marine terminals and get their crude from ships and barges, not pipelines.
it can be shipped from down south, from Canadia, indonesia, wherever. Even from the gulf of meheeko.
Most refiners on the west coast can run whatever crude slate is available.
Heck some of em make changes to their crude diet several times a month, buying whatever is crude or slop or junk is "on sale".
And they do it with nary a hiccup.
The last place I worked would buy up whatever crude it could get cheap and blend it during the charge process to keep from rocking and rolling the towers.
But yer right, the finished products they make in Cali have to meet incredibly tight standards that most refiners outside this area can't or won't bother to make.
A captured, isolated, and manipulated market. The bane of free-market enterprise.