Hacker News Reader

Comment by jeffreyrogers | Hacker News Reader

"Oil" isn't one product. It differs widely in chemical and physical properties (viscosity, how much sulfur and arsenic is present, etc.) depending on how/where it was produced. Different refineries are setup to refine different grades of oil and the oil is often blended before shipment to meet the specs the refineries expect. It is often cheaper for the US to import the right grade of oil than it would be to reconfigure the domestic refineries to process all the domestically produced oil.

This is also why there are several oil "prices" that you will see quoted, the most common two being WTI and Brent.

View on HN

Not to mention that the vast majority of the imports are from western Canada going to refineries in the Midwest (which makes sense that the cost to import is cheaper than because the distance is actually closer than other producing areas of the US where there is more refining demand (gulf coast). Not to mention no one has built a new refinery in the past ~60 years (Guesstimate) and two thirds of the refining capacity is on the gulf coast - which means in some cases a cargo from Venezuela is cheaper than shipping oil from alaska (as a stupid example.

This is a good summary of the article.

Thanks for the insight — very interesting.

Are there physical properties that make these different oils look different? Would I be able to tell them apart if they were in jars, in front of me?

Yes. The color and the smell vary a lot. Venezuela and Canada sell a heavy crude that is basically roofing tar. Some spots in west Texas and Malaysia produce something close enough to diesel to just put in your truck and go with no refining.

https://kimray.com/training/types-crude-oil-heavy-vs-light-s...

What about by products, do some varieties lend themselves better to different petrochemicals? (or petrochecmicals that require a specific variety?)

Yes, the feedstocks for petrochemicals are distilled as part of the refining process and different varieties will have different amounts of the various compounds that are distilled out.

A good example of this is how extremely light, sweet Saharan Blend is $25 more per barrel than Canadian tar sand.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com