American refiners are at record capacity using mostly US produced crude

Fuel Fix:
More American crude is pumping through U.S. refineries, helping to boost crude oil distillation capacity rates to a nearly 40-year high earlier this year, according to the Energy Department.

Crude oil distillation capacity rates are based on an operator's estimate of the input that a distillation unit can process in a 24-hour period under usual operating conditions, recognizing the effects of both planned and unplanned maintenance.

U.S. refineries reached a record high of 18.8 million barrels a day of atmospheric crude oil distillation capacity on January 1 - the highest those rates have been in 38 years. The last time crude oil distillation capacity was that high was in January 1981 at 18.6 million barrels per a day, according to the EIA.

Refineries have also increased the amount of crude oil they are inputting into their systems - referred to as refinery runs. Their crude oil production has more than doubled since 2009, hitting an average of 11 million barrels a day last year.

At the same time refineries are cranking out more products, they're also importing less oil and using more lighter sweet crude from American oilfields. U.S. crude oil imports decreased by 1.3 million barrels a day and U.S. crude oil exports increased by 2.0 million barrels a day, according to the EIA.

On the U.S. Gulf Coast, which is home to about half of U.S. refining capacity, imported only 31 percent of its crude oil inputs to refineries during the first quarter of 2019, down from 68 percent in 2009, according to the EIA.
...
This is further evidence of how wrong President Obama was in the ability of the US to increase domestic production of oil.  It is further evidence of how the US is less reliant on OPEC for its oil supply.  Now Asian buyers and Europeans are most reliant on Middle East crude and the ships that must past through the straights of Hormuz where Iranians have been attacking tankers.

As more refineries in the US switch to the light crude being produced from shale wells the less the US is dependent on imported oil.  With the completion of infrastructure projects in Texas the shale wells in West Texas can produce even more domestic crude and indeed export it to the Asian markets threatened by Iran.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Bin Laden's concern about Zarqawi's remains