Post #2747953

2026-04-29 14:21 UTC

I posted this in another thread the other day but it bears repeating. It's not even really about the refineries not getting any oil supply. Refineries are setup to use SPECIFIC oil feedstock chemistries, if you try to substitute that oil for a different type (light sweet vs heavy sour or mid mid, etc) the process either doesn't work, or it wastes a significant chunk. To convert a refinery to use a different feedstock, it takes a significant amount of engineering time, then you have to effectively SHUT DOWN the whole unit, redo parts of the equipment, then run it back up, test it, and tweak the process variables. Refineries plan this years out and it takes 6+ months to do if nothing goes wrong. Then, they are basically locked into that new feedstock again. Doing any kind of supply shock like this is dumb for any number of reasons. It's even dumber when the critical components to rework the refineries is in shorter supply because people keep blowing up the existing equipment. Lead times on some of this stuff is in the 20+ month range duing normal times. There will not be an easy adjustment, the 10-20% loss in supply figure is misleading at best. This is going to impact everything that uses oil, plastic, fertilizer, lubricants, valves, electronics, etc and its not going to be a 10-20% impact...

Replies (2)

@bluGill@fedia.io 2026-04-29 15:00

That assumes you can get a different type of crude. If a different refinery is setup for texas light sweet crude, they are likely able to take all the oil Texas can pump, and they have pipelines in place from Texas to them. Even if you convert your refinery you can't get any of that crude because it is under contract to the other refinery and they can afford to outbid you because their shipping costs (via the pipeline) are lower. 10 years ago (approximately) there was a North Dakota oil boom - the crude from those wells was shipped via a railroad that goes very close to a Minnesota refinery, but that refinery is setup for Canada crude (including a pipeline) and so the trains went right on by without stopping. The oil ended up in East Cost refineries that had been mothballed (that is shutdown) for years, but they were able to take the North Dakota crude and so reopened. I don't know the current situation - other than a suggestion that the owners of those refineries were not planning to do more than minimal maintenance - that is if something major breaks they would tear down the refinery instead of repairing it (this of course has likely changed several times as the market changes).

Open ##2747982
@GrayBackgroundMusic@lemmy.zip 2026-04-29 16:34

Oh. I thought all crude oil was the same crude oil. Thanks for the info.

Open ##2747983