Texas chemical engineer here. not sure if you touched on this but a big reason we import oil to texas is due to texas’ unique oil refineries built to refine heavy hydrocarbons and generally “nasty oil”. many countries have no means of refining their oil and will sell their crude for cheap to the few countries that can refine it.
Exactly right. I just replied to a user above who erroneously said it was more expensive to import crude. As you mentioned, US refineries are designed for the heavy crude, and heavy crude is sold at a discount in the international market.
It's also a case of its near(ish) to a lot of heavy crudes to the south. It's funny, because where I'm from (Australia) there is just loads of gas and LPG.
Your explanation of refineries leaves out an important detail: you can’t make all the products from any one kind of oil. To continue with your analogy, strawberry oil can only make butane, propane and gasoline, while chocolate oil can also make gasoline, but is the only thing that can make airplane fuel and bunker oil. Heavy oil makes heavy products, light oil makes light products. You can’t get everything we use from either kind.
Cracking hydrocarbon chains into different lengths is all they are doing, gasoline, diesel, kerosene, jet fuel, and plastics creation are all from the same oil
I agree. My first job when I left school in the 1960s was working in a UK oil refinery and the first area I worked on what what we called Products Blending where we mixed different types of petroleum (crude) from various parts of the world to get the optimum output for the market. I remember that the Saudi crude for instance, was so viscus it had to be heated with steam before it could be moved along pipelines whereas other crudes could be as thin as lubricating oil. But the one factor that always seems absent from the "stop drilling oil" advocates is plastic and the world's total reliance on it. I'm not talking about plastic bags but electrical insulation plastics. Stop pumping crude oil and there's no more plastic insulation because its made from crude oil and that means no electricity, none, anywhere, from any source. No electricity means not only no communications but no water, no modern drugs, no food, no commercial transport, etc, etc. The world's population, at least the very few that survived, would revert to the pre industrial era. Stop pumping crude oil and global warming becomes just a minor inconvenience.
@@petemulhearn7787 It's amazing how short sighted most people are. I'm probably a bit younger than you, but I can still remember the time when absolutely everything wasn't made of plastics.
@kingofnothing2260 only real difference is cost of refining the different types of oil example heavy or light refining bitumen is cost and water consuming but yes not much difference in the carbon chain fracking produces lots of condensate very volatile fluid good for military weapons jet fuel
The United States has light sweet crude oil. Which refines almost one for one into gasoline. A little less into kerosene. We import heavy crude because you can get gasoline, diesel, kerosene, carbon chains used in plastics and even fine sand used in pool filters we get from heavy crude.
Gasoline and propane also butane. Popular fuel from Car to cookout grilling also butane for lighter to ignition. From light brown crude oil in America.
the refineries i worked out said they only get 1/3 gasoline and 1/3 diesel or number 2 fuel oil and everything else from tar to butane is the remainder, so they take a lot of the diesel and run it through crackers to make it into gasoline.
While I'm not a chemical engineer, I have been associated with marine logistics since the late 80's and for the last 29 years I've been employed by one of North America's largest independent petroleum refining and marketing company, currently managing international logistics for both US and European imports/exports. All that said to point out that this video is very educational to the lay person who is inexperienced in petroleum refining, marketing, and logistics. I'm actually going to begin using this "strawberry and chocolate" analogy in training new hires and interns in our organization.
All those things can be produced without oil. Oil has just been the easiest way. As the bottom falls out of the fossil fuel market oil may not remain the easiest and cheapest source.
Elemental sulfur is probably the most important usage, with over 90% of sulfur supply coming from the desulfurization process. Where would we be witthout the "king chemical" sulfuric acid.
@@ronvandereerden4714 The primary ingredient in tyres is oil. Think asphalt shingles on house roofs, waterproofing materials in construction, plastics, some pharmaceuticals etc . We will always need oil.
Twenty years ago the head of the International Energy Agency, a UN agency, was in my office talking to a Saudi official. He said, "Petroleum is such useful stuff. You can make plastics, drugs, all kinds of stuff out of it. And do you know what we do with most of it? We burn it up."
Hey Luke! Thanks for pointing this out. You're correct that the Jones Act impacts why the US can't easily ship oil from places like Texas to different parts of the country without a pipeline. This isn't the only reason oil is swapped with other countries-as outlined in the video-but the limitations on shipments between American ports are yet another economic reason to import oil. Quite frankly, I meant to include this in the video, but I missed this point. To hopefully pick up this slack a little bit, albeit in a comment, here's some info on the Jones Act for those interested: The Jones Act is a US federal law from 1920 that requires goods shipped between two American ports (e.g. Texas to California) to be shipped on an American built, owned, and operated vessel. (Interestingly, the ship at the beginning of the video is one such ship called the "Texas Voyager" which is Jones Act compliant.) This rule, intended to protect domestic shipping interests, effectively limits the competition on these trade routes, which can lead to higher costs. Evidently, it's not always too expensive to comply, as some oil tankers do, in fact, move between American ports. But sometimes this extra cost can make the difference. So, as I mentioned in the video, oil refiners generally will take the cheaper option, and the Jones Act is one more reason it can be more expensive to use American oil. I hope this helps, and my apologies for not including it in the main video! - Nathan
Chemical Engineer here, all 35 years of my experience has been in petroleum refining. Your video is surprisingly accurate but somewhat misleading. Economics and environmental permits/regulations are driving 95% of the decisions. It's just cheaper for a refinery to buy foreign oil than to spend $5 - 10 Billion (that's with a B) to convert just one refinery to American oil. In addition, it can easily take 5 - 10 years to get the permits that would allow you to make the conversion. And before the haters go off on "Yeah but refineries make $10 Billion a day" - they don't. Seasonally and during maintenance they can easily lose $10 MM plus per month. In addition, a refiner doesn't control the price of either its feedstocks or products, they float on their respective commodity markets so it's an incredibly high risk business with massive capital requirements and almost infinite liability. For comparison, imagine if Apple couldn't control the sales price of an iPhone.
Thank you for lending your expertise. Can you explain Trump era $2 per gallon prices followed by the huge jump in fuel when Brandon strangled domestic oil production under the guise of protecting the environment?
The rising gas prices the last few years are the result of a number of reasons. #1 OPEC (middle east oil producing countries) cutting oil production. #2 Venezuela collapsing as a global oil producer and #3 Russian oil is largely being boycotted now as a result of their criminal invasion of Ukraine. The United States is now producing more oil than ever before which is great but we are only one part of a global supply chain. Supply globally is down therefore prices are up
@tomking7367 production is up massively during biden. They're public records... Oil production collapse post pandemic oil demand collapse.. of course there's wrinkles in the oil/gasoline markets... Then add huge war with 3rd largest production, second largest exporter... that wouldn't effect oil/refined products price a bit.... nah, not a bit.
2 types of crude, sweet and sour. We have mostly sweet in America so most refineries were sweet until the 70s oil embargo. Oil companies spent billions to redo refineries to sour (middle east) crude. Sweet refineries can't process sour, but sour refineries can process sweet crude (but get less end product). I used to work for an oil company and had an orientation day at a refinery. This is what they told me.
I have worked in the oil and gas industry for years. When you talk about strawberry and chocolate oil you are somewhat mistaken. The difference is what they call heavy oil (Bitumen) and thin light crude oil. The technology to modify heavy oil into thin light crude oil exists and we use it in Canada a lot. We process it in an upgrader and then it can be refined in a regular refinery.
@@vickclash7955 "Tech" is simply something man-made that we use to create something that otherwise wouldn't exist. It has nothing to do with how new or innovative it is. It's short for technology.
That idea was covered... The U.S. doesn't currently really have such, and political is against investing in creating those different refineries. Am I mistaken?
Geologist here. Conventional oil isn't a "puddle," it exists in the pore spaces of porous reservoir rocks like sandstone and limestone. Shale has a much lower permeability, making fracking necessary to economically extract those hydrocarbons.
@@michaelmaya7742 not initially :) ... my fear has always been - what happens to the concrete and steel casing that go well below the water table to get to the fracked oil - over time will these containment measures crack due to earthquakes or simple concrete and steel decay - allowing the oil from abandoned wells to seep up into the water table (oil floats and just a table spoon of oil can contaminate thousands of gallons of water). Think land based Deep Water Horizons all over the Permian Basin - including large sections of the Ogallala Aquifer. Oil companies seem confident this can't happen - but ...
@michaelmaya7742 One of the bigger problems with fracking isn't pollution of aquifers but how the leftover water is disposed of (almost all that's pumped down to frack is taken back out again) Because oil/gas exploration in the USA is exempt from EPA rules, chemically contaminated used fracking water has been repeatedly dumped into nearby waterways with the expected effects you can imagine Over on this side of the Atlantic, environmental law compliance costs make almost all gas/shale fracking uneconomic "Peak oil" was passed around 2004 (1973 for the continental USA). What's left is heavier crudes and tight oils and whilst more oil might be being pumped it costs way more to get it. In real terms oil is unimaginably cheap compared to the 1960s and USA fuel really should be close to $9/gallon if mid-century profit margins were being maintained. That's not helped by the Saudis and others having stopped investing in new intrastructure and simply pumping to make profits until the equipment dies - at some point there's likely to be a big snap in prices and fuel will pass $15/gallon (it's already $9/gallon in most of the rest of the world. USA fuel has the lowest tax component of virtually western democracy)
I worked the other end. Most of which came from Alaska. Rebuilding a coke unit at the end of the refinery process. The coke at that end was mostly carbon with enough sulfur content to have to export it overseas. You could boil out the sulfur and use the carbon left over to make steel. Some countries do not have a problem with that.
Since US oil is freely traded, it goes to the highest bidder which isn’t necessarily a US refinery. It can be cheaper for US refiners to purchase foreign crude rather than domestic.
Puerto Rico has tons of gas and oil resources, as per its recent investigation. Why the US says its limited resources can be due to security protection. With Puerto Rico being only 500 Miles away from the richest oil basin in the world (Venezuela), its time to build US Port of the Americas, and other deep sea oil bases to extract it, such as Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana is doing.
Around here (Delaware River), once home to the largest oil refining complex on the East Coast, eight refineries at its peak, only four remain due to deindustrialization and foreign competition. They import tons of crude from Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Angola, Venezuela, Mexico, Norway, Scotland, Iraq, Newfoundland, Canada, Colombia, Gabon, Congo, Chad, and the former Soviet Union. Those refineries here were built to handle those types of crudes along with crude from Texas.
why would you even bother to build a refinery if it would not do the job of the material you have.. their oil didn not change ..lol where did they get the clean oil to refine it at.. if they only have hard to refine crude oil.. that just dont make sence at all... build what you need ..or its a waste of time and money....
Sometimes oversimplifying things ends up straying from the meaning. California policy has made it so difficult to pump oil out of the ground that there is no economic way it can compete with foreign oil. The Biden administration's ban on expanded pipelines means that any additional domestically sourced oil absolutely cannot be used in America as the transfer apparatus is already at capacity. The Biden promise to shut down the fossil fuel industry in 10 years means that there is no reasonable source of funds to modernize existing refineries. The Jones Act also prevents domestic oil from being moved by ship to excess refining capacity and there is only so much trains and trucking can do while still making any economic sense. Trying to explain this topic with any degree of accuracy without a comprehensive analysis of the broken US political system is impossible.
So you are saying that it is more a Political Question than a Practical one. Yeah, Nobody can deal with California, It should just be DELETED from the American number of States, and Go back to 49 States, Because they are not worth the Problems Involved.
A simple clarification on the Jones Act. It simply starts that foreign ships cannot transfer anything from 1 US port to another US port. This law needs to be abridged to allow the use of foreign-flagged ships to carry US goods within the US waterways when needed.
Why should there be government funds (your money) for private profit companies, especially gigantic profit companies? F them if they can't compete. That's how capitalism works.
The strawberry and chocolate analogy is good, but you could have also used the real technical terms in tandem for real informative and educational value
The "strawberry and chocolate" bit was fine for kids 10 and under... but really... "light" and "heavy" oils and their relevance to refineries can be quite easily explained.
EIA Annual Energy Outlook sees production of crude oil and distillates remaining at current levels (around 12-13 mmbd) through 2050. Even that seems very optimistic.
@maxhugen There's more than just heavy and light oil. There's also sour and sweet oil. Some refineries use a blend of oils to get a mixture they can process. Some refineries can only process sweet oil and others can process both sweet and sour. Those refineries are more complex. Marathon refinery in Texas City is an example of a very complex refinery.
You know I guess he is just trying to white wash shale oil and it’s very sour if I m not wrong which results in higher corrosion of vessels and lines also it’s highly polluting in comparison to sweet crude. It just feels like another propaganda news piece from shale oil lobby
It is simple economics and government regulation…..Refineries were built to process cheap heavy crudes because that’s what was imported when they were built while most US oil production is lighter crude which commands higher prices. You won’t convince any refinery to spend billions to convert refineries to use higher cost feedstock it doesn’t make sense as it’s a negative ROI. Now we could have new refineries using the higher cost feedstock we produce to make refined products for export but the EPA pretty much prevents new refinery construction to save the whatever ( fish, bird, bug, etc) of the moment.
Try the water you drink and air you breathe. Oil refineries don’t kill certain species, when they pollute they kill everything. Even people over time. Pretty sure you could build a refinery but will be expected to clean up your own mess or on the hook if you get people sick. They don’t want to be responsible for that
One thing never mentioned is that all of US transportation n(cars, trucks, trains, planes) amount to only about 30% of the oil usage in the country. Aside from transportation, there are over 8,000 products that are derived from oil - going from bug spray to medical filters.
Transportation is 28% of the TOTAL energy usage, not just oil. Petroleum products make up 90% of the 28%. And 66.6% of petroleum products are used for transportation. A lot of industrial and chemical products can also use NG, and it makes little sense to use something more expensive. And I would agree, that isn't all products either. We can reduce our overall costs by switching to electric, and greatly improve our standing in the world political arena, and keeps us out of oil wars. This is especially true, if everyone puts up solar panels, because they count as 'efficiency' because tracking a 10kw home system isn't worth anyone's time to track unless you are in Europe. Germany does because they are desperate to look good and is the largest country (about the size of California). In total Europe uses about as much oil as we do in the US and they have to import 90% of it so are we paying for a war for us, or them. It doesn't mean it will happen overnight, or that the tech like EVs works for everyone today. It works for SOME people. Let them. The tech can and will improve. We just didn't have anyone working on it.
@@madflower8723 EVs rely more on oil, gas and coal for their existence which is why the components are mostly manufactured in China and other foreign countries. And how is the electricity to be generated minus coal and natural gas? And Germany is experiencing an energy crunch by trying to go exclusively on renewable energy, just not panning out!
@@Scottar50 Probably would help if they didn't close all their nuclear power plants. But sadly humans are still often ruled by fear, rather than good sense.
@@madflower8723 Gas & diesel are by far the most efficient way to propel vehicles. And those EV's that you appear to love need roads, too... and guess what? About 10% of the oil that we use, is used to make asphalt to build & maintain those roads.
Th U.S. can and often does produce more oil than it needs, but here the rub. The U.S. has lite sweet crude oil which is worth a premium, and we built refineries to process heavy crude (dirtier oil). The reason- it was more profitable to sell our oil to other countries and buy Crude oil to process for domestic use despite the cost of shipping it to the other side of the world, It’s all about the benjamin’s
The massive amount of oil produced from the Baaken Field in N Dakota isn't oily at all. Industry parlance calls it "condensate" {the stuff that condenses in natgas pipes} or "natural gasoline"-stuff that is even thinner than diesel.
The Alaskan oil refinery was in North Pole which was the town that I grew up in and I remember that almost everyone's father at school used to work for the Oil refinery or was in the Military. One of my friends dad was a Cobra Helicopter pilot and he used to fly overhead many times. Fun place to grow up and we never had the oil crisis of the late 70s and early 80s because of the oil refinery.
Sour oil is high sulphur, no big deal, by the way the US has known reserves that will last over 500 years. I spent my life in the industry and I am 75. Iran has 800 years for the whole world. Russia can handle another thousand. The Arabs need to look a little deeper
Access to good information is what we investors need to progress financially and generally in life. here's a good one and I am grateful for investing digital market..
🚩FACT🚩 The gas in your local gas station is still saudi gas, NOT AMERICAN. The saudi royal mafia has quietly amassed quite a portfolio of American energy assets that includes full ownership of America’s largest oil refineries🤷♀️
Dr. Michael Hudson explained it in economic terms in his book, Superimperialism. Profits are taken in Panama. On the ledger, there is a column called international. Panamanian flagged tanker go into Houston with crude prices jacked up. Output/input ratio held low, taxes are avoided due to the appearance of low refinery profits. No new refineries are built as they are not profit centers. The profit center is a ledger in Panama. Another international dollar zone with flagged carriers is Liberia.
California government is working on shutting down all oil production in the state, so eventually almost all oil will have to be imported at international market prices into the state, raising prices for everything more than it already is.
Dang 😂 What is wrong with American politicians??? I thought African and Banana Republics were bad. American politicians have gone ROGUE. Take for example $94 billion dollars to ISRAEL 🇮🇱 and UKRAINE 🇺🇦. Most Americans don't agree but the politicians from both parties are pushing it. Even those opposing it are doing so out of pretext to appear they care about the borders. Even those congressmen who outrighly oppose the International aid may be the "controlled opposition ". They are there to make the population feel at ease that the system works. 😅😅😅😅😅
@@strawdemindset greasy gruesome newsom has been systematically closing down oil production refining and any industry that uses chemicals like the chrome plating industry since he got in office to thye point that Chevron is leaving the state it's home state
@@snapon666Excellent! It's about time we weaned ourselves off these toxic and destructive industries. If humanity survives it will have to reset from these dead end technologies, which only destroy the environment and peoples health.
All oil is not equal in chemical composition, hence not all oil can be used for the same purposes. Most of our oil is not fuel grade oil, although we do have sweet crude production. We trade our oil to countries that need what we have in exchange for the types of oil we need here in the U.S. There are also oils that are still to young to produce, the oil needs to cook a little bit longer. Oil and Natural Gas are the result of natural geologic processes, and as long as those processes continue, this planet will never run out of oil and natural gas.
@@Underground-Echoes we will run out of oil about the same time we run out of people who spend their lives acting stupid and unemployed; I'll let you choose which one you believe does the most harm.
If you use someone else’s oil first, they run out first. If you have enough oil of your own you only use it to keep them from bankrupting you while you use their oil so you can maintain a reserve. In the meantime some will try to get national agreements to limit oil use, which no one using the oil in their right mind would ever agree to until they find themselves running out of oil. Yet weirdly some people for various reasons don’t really seem to be in their right mind, so one might assume that someone is financing, or benefiting them financially. 🤷🏻♂️
This is a well done video and one of the few that accurately attributes the fracking revolution to the genius of a Greek immigrant named George Michell. I am a third generation independent oil producer it needs to tell viewers that the last generation refineries were built in US in the 1970s when it was widely believed US oil production of strawberry or sweet crude oil with low levels of sulphur had peaked. Therefore these refineries must be designed to process chocolate crude oil which is high sulphur crude oil requiring stainless steel for corrosion control and is more expensive.
..and then there's those pesky wars , going on. Humbly repent and know Jesus everyone, His shed blood payed the price of sin, is the only way to God and eternity in heaven.
If one is going to refine Canadian tar and Venezuelan heavy crude. In addition, most refineries go 1 -2 years between process turnarounds so citing the orignal data of construction is quite misleading
@@OliverdeClisson If you build something that takes decades to be profitable, then 30 years later realize you build the wrong type (original 70s refineries), would you do it again? New refineries take a lot of time and capital to build, all for type of fuel that may not be popular 30 years from now.
I remember reading an article years ago by an oil expert who said when we start to rely and use Shale Oil in great quantities then we're in the downslide of fossil fuels. He said it's too expensive to drill, is full of impurities and needs a ton of additives so when we start to use this instead of high grade oil it's a good indication that the industry has peaked. We entered the era of Resource Wars back in 1990, and it's why there's been so much conflict in the Middle East. If you look closely at all the countries that have some form of conflict also have gas or oil reserves. Even the current mess in Gaza, there is Gas at the heart of the issue. There are Natural Gas fields off the coast of Gaza, and I would say that is one of the reasons for the conflict in Gaza or why the Western world won't interfere. As Israel has already given drilling rights to some Western companies. In the future we're going to see further conflicts over precious metals, as well as water and food plus a plethora of other natural resources.
Nearly all wars have always been about resources. What were they doing the past 6,000 years? It's bit of a stretch to say it's now an era of resource wars because "reasons".
There has been wars and fighting long before the 1990’s, since the ottomans were driven out and new lines were drawn by the allies. This is the real start of the mess. Most likely that article is very out of date. Techniques and me to odd improve with time and shale became much more abundant to the point of the USA still being oil neutral and being a leading exporter
You are really conflating correlation with causation with oil/gas being at the center of all the conflicts in that region. It also ignores ethnic tensions that have been there since forever
You can thank the Obiden admin and demorats for our current and future catastrophic problems. They were in charge and implemented the policies that are causing every major poblems in the US.
@@Izokaytobewite Democratic results like a booming economy, increaing wages, inflation caused by the invasion started by Trump's bromance partner now brought down, necessary overdue work on infrastructure being done, investments in the move away from fossil fuels to reduce long term climate change while still having American oil production hitting record levels to deal with things now when the terrorist Russian state is an unreliable supplier of fossil fuels to the world and legislation to better secure the border if Trump and Johnson would stop blocking the legislation. And of course a huge change from the President Trump era when Trump spouted hate for non-white people, Immigrants and refugees and emboldened white supremacist groups thus making non-white people feel unsafe. So exactly which of these improvements do you hate and why do you hate improvements to the country?
Its honestly a much better long term plan to import as much foreign oil as possible till global oil supply starts to dwindle. Purchase up and use other countries oil reserves and conserve our own till either we will be the only country to have enough access to oil and can even export it as much higher prices
The map is wrong - it's showing California and Rockes oil as being unuseable, in actual fact Arco has a LOT of refining capacity in California and a lot of our oil from the North Slope of Alaska and the Rockies gets fed into those refineries, along with Arco's own production in California.
the whole research behind the video seems dubious, e.g. why would you show Oman as a significant oil producer and omit Kuwait in the graph at 0:45 when Kuwait produces 20x as much...
@@whiskeysk It's not literal. Just to give an idea but yes, regions are usually split by other than present day borders as the dinosaurs didn't know any better.
Oil extracted here is already promised to foreign customers. The price of oil products depends on processing capacity. Fewer plants guarantee higher prices & higher prices mean much more profit from reduced production, & all the costs that go with it. Export means filling tank cars & sending them directly to ports along the shoreline. Simplicity.
@@wtf2203 and i am talking today...and tomorrow...until 2016 it was working not long ago....they wanted to get rid of new found natural gas...and to ukraine....is one reason it was passed...oil found here needs to stay here...its always a supply issue....not a abundance...cant shortside today for tomorrow..
Mycorrhizae fungi extracts N, P, carbon from the air and puts it in the soil for the plant in a symbionic relationship with the plant. This addition to farming would change the amount of carbon in the air, putting it in the soil for the plant. I do it, but it is rare for a farmer to - and I have never heard of a person on the left talk about it, or the right, for that matter. I use bacteria too, that extracts N from the air, and other that breaks down existing P in the soil, lots of P in the soil, everywhere man made fertilizer was used (it is not water soluable, until the bacteria changes that).
@@scottcarr3264 How exactly do we run our society and make decisions? Politics you say? 🤯Every major issue is drowning in politics. You can't ignore it unless you want to have the understanding of a child.
@@accuratealloys Truth! By "Politics" people mean "leftist politics"! Which means recession! The right is almost always "pro-drilling' pro-consumer, pro-family, pro-business!
That’s not gonna happen. On PA, there is a plant nearby that has two towers, they deactivated one and looking to shutdown the 2nd one. Nuclear is not profitable.
I think that you have the problem of crude types and refinery utilization a bit off. When US light crudes were plentiful, the refineries used that as their feedstock. As the production volumes declined, the refineries started looking for other sources of crude. Some of that was domestic and others foreign. When using heavier gravity crudes, additional processing steps are necessary to produce transport fuels. These additional steps are various cracking processes and hydrogenation processes. There is a tremendous amount of capital invested in these processes. As heavy crude sources were sought, Venezuela was the first source as it is nearby but is low gravity crudes. But it was thought to be a stable, large volume source. Once the Gulf Coast refineries were set up to process 25 degree API crude and lower gravity crudes, it doesn't mean that the refineries can no longer process the lighter crudes. The result is that if the refineries were to process more of the lighter crudes, their upgrader processes would then be idled for lack of feedstock. When Venezuela became politically unstable and production volumes began declining, the Gulf Coast refiners began sourcing crude from Canada and particularly the upgraded tar sands. The upgraded tar sands are very similar to Venezuelan crude. To put it into perspective, Venezuela once produced between 4 and 5 million barrels per day. The last time I checked, it was producing about 600,000 barrels per day. California is its own separate market as is Oregon and Washington. California at one time exported crude and refined products. The crude types in California were of the heavier gravities. If I remember, the Kern River field near Bakersfield produced a 6 degree API crude. As a result, California refineries have long been designed to process heavier crudes in the 10 to 20 degree gravity. As an aside, the main reason why gasoline prices are so high in California as compared to the rest of the nation is the level of tax burden. When I last checked, the total tax burden on gasoline in California is between $1.25 and $1.50 per gallon. Additionally, CARB has placed very stringent emissions limits on refineries to the point where the refiners are considering closing down refineries rather than add the equipment to meet the emissions standards. Chevron recently considered closing its Richmond refinery rather than meeting the new emissions standards. If you want to compare gasoline prices in California, compare them to the prices in Oregon and Washington. This was a rather simple explanation, but I think that I touched on some of the key aspects with regards to source and supply. And actually, the last new refinery built in the US was at the former La Gloria OIl and Gas refinery in Tyler, Texas in 1978. It had been a ~15,000 bpd refinery and a completely new refinery was built on the site with a capacity of ~60,000 bpd with the entire output being unleaded gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. There were minor products such as petroleum coke and cut back asphalt. There was a pipeline that connected the refinery directly to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana to supply the base with jet fuel.
Oil is not just one commodity we export light sweet crude that our refineries can’t use and import the heavy sour crude we can. The problem is stupid government regulations that make new refineries almost impossible to build!
There is a refinery that does handle sour crude and that one is the Delaware City Refinery in Delaware. I have heard that there are a couple of other refineries that can.
Ultimately in the end the shuffleing is how they control the the priceing.. When I was in High school ( im 80 now😅😅) I lived in south Texas just miles from Matamoros Mexico border town at Brownsville. We had the cheapest gas in America because the petroleum was driven across the border in tanker trucks 24/7 in a big.U turn circle into Mexico and ( imported back) into the Us and our gas was 12.9 cents a gallon for regular and 14.9 cents a gal for premiem. ( They didn't have no lead yet. It was great cause we were in the heyday of monster engine muscle cars.. It was a tax slight of hand trick. And diesel was protected by the DOE national cap to garantee the continued flow of US comerce. It was 9cents a galon for agg and rail and truckers. All us comodities move by diesel. Rail river( barges) and trucks. Right now the Mississippi is so low that barge traffic is highly difficult. If that river dries up it will cripple the largest supply chain in our country. No way trucking can meet the demand. Its a true crisis they aren't even mentioning it to the populas.Typical of our government. They never tell us about the real problems That would cause nation wide financial colapse and famin.( Not really important 😂) Dandahermit
God bless you, Sir. Thank you for your valuable insight. I myself drive a 96 Ford F-150, last year of the Cleveland/Windsor engines, because I know how to fix em, but damn gas was 80 cents a gallon when this was built. These newer cars can go a distance without gas, my truck needs gas daily and I work down the road.
There are different kinds of oil. Our oil is needed by certain countries for specific purposes like plastic while we need imported oil specifically for gas.
We can already process everything we produce. The truth is it's about efficiency. Heavy crude makes more diesel, light crude makes more gasoline. That's the real reasons countries buy oil from each other. More efficient/profitable refining is attained by mixing to receive the highest quantity of the end product you want.
A while ago I read that the last refinery built in the US was in Louisiana in 1977, as he said. However, the same article also said that no new refineries would ever be built here because of declining demand. The US vehicle fleet has doubled in size since 2000, but demand for gas and diesel has fallen 40% in the same period, because the cars and trucks are much more efficient compared to 25 years ago, and because EVs are beginning to catch on. Consequently, the refineries that remain (every year a few close) are working at basically full capacity. So Donald's 'drill-drill-drill' is meaningless sloganeering. We don't have the refining capacity to process more oil, and it wouldn't affect the price of gas if we did, because the price of gas is based on the world price of oil which changes every day because of many factors beyond our control.
“Automobiles are much more efficient than they were 25 years ago” is a lie. The efficiency of our automobiles has not changed in any substantial way since the 1960s. In fact, during the 1970s efficiency actually went down as emission controls degraded engine operation. In the 1980s efficiency improved again when the industry introduced computer controlled fuel injected engines that could meet the emission standards without all the equipment of the 1970s. This brought engine efficiency back to around where it was before the ’70s. Since then there has been little improvement, and with diesel engines, it’s gotten worse due to new regulations. And because of regulations, most people no longer drive cars, which are more fuel efficient, but now drive trucks and SUVs which are worse. That could change if CAFE standards were removed and we could get bigger cars again, as more people would drive big cars instead of SUVs and trucks.
You do realize that drilling for oil in the us can be used as leverage when the Saudis try to increase the price of oil you flood the market with cheap American oil which causes the Saudis to drop the price which keep the price of fuel steady and in check when you stop that drilling you lose all leverage you have
Competition works to keep prices low for consumers until, that is, you have U.S. oil company executives colluding with OPEC/foreign oil companies to keep oil prices high. Then, when the Department of Justice investigates this illegality, over thirty members of the Congress of the United States of America try and shut the investigation down. Hurry up and guess which political party these "representatives of the people, for the people" belong to and I'll give you a "major prize". Andrew J Myers👽
@@ethanlamoureux5306 The internal combustion engine hasn't greatly improved, but it has improved. The entire vehicle has improved, thanks to lighter materials, and wind tunnels, and computer modeling and computer control. Computers are the reason why EVs are actually feasible. The big cars in the 70s got like 1/3 the mileage of the current F150 and are far less useful and safe. While you may not like CAFE, it is right on the money, there wasn't as much incentive to improve the efficiency of the larger vehicles because getting a vehicle from 10mpg to 20mpg only resulted in 10mpg increase, and that meant they already had to sell one high mileage car to meet the standard, so they just needed to sell two, and that cost zero because the car was already designed, built, and tested. CAFE is smart.
They are importing oils and all rare earth materials so the US can have hegemony on energy, semiconductors, plastic, and fertilizer later when other countries export their resources for cheap money.
Thank you (and to many others who have commented already) for explaining that very complicated subject for me. I always new we've never been energy independent, but never truly understood why. I just always assumed it was because we consume more than we produce and that was it. I really appreciate the simplified explanation.
The Investors who enjoy the Profits from Oil development, have controlled the Government since the 1940's. The chart the site presents shows the amounts of oil produced since the Halliburton Administration began their efforts. The US Currency has suffered as the Oil company Investors noticed profits. The US Currency has demonstrated no visible support for the US Dollar for 20 years. They earn piles of cash, but the value has diminished. Like Wiemar Germany, they now provide what appears to be some form of Powerful Leader. The image is like any Product, a corporate product and it does need to deliver good return on investment. Too bad the Money that was created in 1970 no longer has any value.
I worked on a US Flag tanker that brought crude oil from Prudhoe Bay Alaska to the west coast of the USA. We would only deliver crude oil there. A normal trip would be to take crude oil to Los Angles, California and then to Cherry Point, Washington. The crude oil was to be used for local refineries only.
Our refineries are able to use high sulfur crude whereas most refineries are not as efficient and not able to use it, oil is used for much more than just fuel. A fractional tower is used to crack the carbon chains into different products, at the bottom of the tower the heaviest products are pulled, asphalt tars etc at the top are the lightest products like ESTHERS ETHERS, and ALCOHOLS. WE produce lightsweet crude which is easiest to refine...
If you ever do another video, please add some of the other super crucial factors that uphold this status quo - money/profit for a few vs cheap fuel for many (proudly sponsored by politics)
Fracking is not cheap and is economically feasible when gas prices are high. Using $3.25/gallon and above threshold, gas was at this level April 2008 to Sept 2008. This a 6 month spike. Given the capital investments, one better not be using a 6 month spike as the basis of estimating future gas prices. It is 3 years later before gas exceed $3.25 and that is March 2011 to Sept 2014. It was not until Russia invaded Ukraine in Feb 2022 did gas prices spike above $3.25. The problem with it, gas prices can and do vary, thus the profitability of fracking will move with a positive correlation. If prices drop significantly, then fracking cuts back on production, with lower production, the "strawberry" oil refineries don't have feed. The refinery has high capital costs and this variability is risk. Higher risk, higher discount rate, lower NPV to build or not build a refinery or do any capital intensive expenditure.
The US has enough oil to last at least another 500 years. There is over a trillion barrels of recoverable oil in Colorado alone. Utah, Idaho and Nevada also have large reserves that have never been touched. Natural gas reserves are much larger. States such as Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa have completely untouched reserves of natural gas. However, politics have prevented access to most of these massive reserves. There is now a law in MN that makes drilling for natural gas illegal.
#1 reason too many environmental laws about pipelines, refineries being built, & drilling .And forget oil companies want a shortage to keep prices higher for bigger profits
@@richardbergren6522 It’s a weird dynamic … oil and gas companies do want to keep prices high to make a profit (can’t say I blame them) but the supplies are so great that they can’t just buy up the supply and sit on it because they can’t …. So they turn to politics to make taping it illegal so no one else can do it till they change the laws in the future
Beginning to think oil companies like progressives because there are no real alternative energy sources and progressives like to keep energy costs higher than they need to be.
Whe I was a little kid back in the 1950-60’s growing up in western Nebraska, a lot of little towns, like Chadron NE, Sidney NE & Hot Springs SD, had their own little oil refineries for the local produced crude oil; the towns also had their own little (city owned) Coal Fired Power-plants, (since bigger is better) big business & competition plus Government Imposed environmental costs, are part of what caused the demise of those little refineries and power plants.
@@gregorymalchuk272 It's easy to make diesel for tractors, which is prob. what they were doing. I worked a a small refinery outside Ventura Ca once and when I told the motel clerk what i was doing, she was incredulous that there was a dirty refinery that close by their beach. (I bet it's gone now, it was tiny)
1974 I called the EPA and said I was at monsanto seattle, and there was a chemical leak going into the Duwamish river. They said they had no one to send. My thoughts were that the EPA was a shakedown organization, and monsanto had already paid.
Mixing a little bit here, nuclear is usually used for electricity, while oil can be used for power, fuel, chemicals, heating, etc. electricity vs total energy need. Refiners could make a profit by using their refinery, while producers sell theirs on the free market.
Nuclear energy can provide the heat and hydrogen for oil refining, which would increase yield by 27%. Because we currently have to burn a portion of the oil residuals to get the heat and hydrogen for refining.
@brucebarnes8138 If we have electrified rail networks and public transportation, then the only thing that would need to use duel would be trucks and ships as people themselves would to taking trains. France in particular, runs basically everything off nuclear without much need for electric cars
US refineries can blend light sweet with heavy crude and easily process it. They make more money exporting the high quality US produced light sweet while we pay more at the pump. You’re being fooled.
Talking about this without mentioning the huge threat oil poses to our ability to survive on this planet makes it seem like these environmental regulations are backwards and don't make sense. True energy independence is only possible if we reduce consumption and essentially change the way we are living, otherwise we will be perpetually dependent on extraction.
Heavy sour crude (foreign) vs. the WTI sweet stuff (us) can easily be fixed by Canadian tar sand heavy bitumen, & domestic heavy sour from the Gulf Mex & North Slope.
If you're losing 2 gallons thru Evaporation and Leaks, what kind of barrels are they using? This is hillarious. REALITY CHECK... They don't actually use barrels!
Our light crude makes it possible for every component for device we all post comments from. The US has enough as of 2019 for at least 1000 years. Ive been poking holes in the ground for 20 years and oil isnt going anywhere
You do know that you need plants for that to make it right? It uses land that we use for food so the food prices will go up. In the west it would not be a real problem, but for 3 world country's it will be. But what is your problem with oil? It isn't from fossils, that was made-up by the Rockefellers to make it seem more scares. And climate change because of our Co2 is also BS. There is only 0.04% in the atmosphere. Of that 0.04% humans only are responsible for 3 % And the biggest polluters ( if you can call them that) like China are allowed to go on till 2030. While we in the west will destroy all our economies with this Green Marxists BS.
Few reasons for why that won't work at least not right away. First you'd need car companies on board most engines today can't take a pure ethanol blend it destroys them hence why E85 exists its not as bad on engines. Secondly it's only superior in emissions respect. You actually get less mileage on Ethanol as opposed to gas. I.e it produces less energy then gas. It's a great idea don't get me wrong but it won't work currently.
Ethanol has a lot of water in it and eventually destroys your engine. I use to believe it was a good product also. The other thing is it’s more expensive. Matter of fact they can only put ethanol into gasoline with government subsidies
You could have just said that the oil we have in the U.S. is light sweet and that our refineries are best at heavy sour. Regardless, oil as a commodity is a set world price. A barrel costs what a barrel costs, so we ship much of our oil to refineries in other countries because light sweet is actually easier to refine. As much as everyone wants the world to just flip a switch and change to renewables, it is not going to happen because it can't. There aren't enough batteries to store that energy, and with current tech, there can't be.
bro. we bring cold lake crude from Canada, because we need heavy oil, to produce asphalt and heavy oils, we mix this oil with Bakken oil from the Dakotas, wich is a lighter oil, to produce light products, such a s gasoline, diésel and jet fuel. bro.😂
Yup, literally some gen Z trying to act like he knows what's going on. No mention of Line 5, Keystone, Keystone XL, Trans-mountian etc. His quick picture shows a few Enbridge lines. And yes, there is a fight with Canada. Joe canceled Keystone XL on his first day in office. Canada is now looking to send its oil overseas, using Trans-mountian. The days of cheap Alberta oil to the US are over, and Joe caused it.
No one expected US crude to double in output so there are no domestic refineries available to process all this sweet crude and you are not permitted build a new refinery so only option is to export it. Simple.
Simple change the rules, and build better infrastructures here at home. Not depending on foreign shipping, especially during these war times . National security issue. Be independent and self reliant as a free people. Simple.
@@chriauc2976 have you met the EPA? Those guys are personally dedicated to the destruction of all things commercial or capitalistic in the mindless pursuit of their environmental religion.. They worship trees, and would rather see a bare field of sagebrush and the occasional wildflower, than a plowed field producing agriculture, and feeding the world.
Although it would be difficult to site a brand new refinery, oil companies make new investments each year to maintain and adapt existing refineries. When I worked for Conoco, different refineries were competing each year to come up with projects with a good ROI so projects could proceed at their location. Having a project at your plant was good for your career, provided demand for local labor, and for engineers designing and building stuff is fun! The cost for permitting is a drag on profitability, but at least in the Gulf Coast states it doesn't stop projects.
The problem is we need refineries. We could be energy independent but not if the government actively regulates against it. If the government supported oil and refining we could. The government doesn't so we don't.
Or we need EVs, which keeps us out of the oil wars, and isolates the economy from oil price fluctuations which can be manipulated. It can reduce overall government costs especially if you can also talk everyone into installing solar, the overall long term costs drop considerably. There is far less need for EPA oversight for mining activities, or at the end use emissions. Then there is less need for an expensive grid upgrades, and NO ONE knows how much energy we are actually using. Which makes us look really good as a country on the world political stage. They can guesstimate, but it isn't worth the governments time to track every 10kw solar installation. I don't think anything larger then 1mw is tracked federally. The rules especially for under 20kw are pretty sparse even for utilities. I would agree at this point, EVs don't fit the needs of everyone. The technology isn't quite there. Namely the 5 minute charge speeds, and chargers capable of delivering that kind of power. However, they work in certain circumstances. Namely if you can charge at home, and rarely travel outside the 300 mile range in a day. The technology will improve.
Getting more into detail of the types of crude oil would've helped with the context as to why refineries can't just use any crude oil. One prime example, a lot of our gasoline and diesel fuel has to be made with imported crude from the North Sea (Brent Crude) because gasoline and diesel require light "sweet" crude which has a low sulfur content (sweet is used as a term for low sulfur crude). The only oil fields in the US that produce that are in West Texas and Pennsylvania and those fields are mostly tapped out. Fracking oil produced in the US is primarily heavy "sour" (high sulfur content) crude, which is fine for things like plastics, lubricants, etc but isn't economically feasible to refine into fuel. Gahwar field (Saudi Arabia) crude is light "sour" crude so can be refined into fuel though the process is more involved and costly to make fuel that meets EPA/EU emissions standards, but can produce fuel cheaply for countries with no emissions laws.
Dang it. I thought I was following. But earlier folks said the Middle Eastern oil was heavy crude, not light. And that fracking oil was light, not heavy.
Pretty good video, but the strawberry/chocolate terminology was counterproductive and insulting. How does that help explain anything? Do you think that most people can't handle the concepts of high/low sulfur and heavy/light oil? WTF?
Some of your information is incorrect!! British Columbia Canada does send oil to California, by boat and pipeline!! Alaska produces the most in America!! The mail land is pretty much tapped out and that is why they take Canadian oil and gas
Love the content. Refreshing to see proper journalism. I have a question, if I may. Namibia has recently been increasing oil production and it seems there are many players in Africa's newest oil rush. The US has recenty built a bunker of an embassy in Windhoek. No idea why such a statement needs to be made in a country which has about 2.5 million people. Perhaps it is because our former occupiers, South Africa, are now part of BRICS? Security or greed? Your data seems to favour the latter and our beautiful country will be destroyed by greed. Would be nice to see the players on the field and to see how the deals affect our small nation. We dont have the journalism that competes with your calibre. If anyone is interested in the story and needs to travel to Namibia. I will gladly assist.
Will you assist immune response against . We are being censored in Canada now please share Commissioners Report released in Ottawa: #nationalcitizensinquiry
More probably American insecurity (and there's always our greed). Tanzania, Kenya, and Libya are the countries where our embassies were attacked. Far, far from Namibia. I'm sorry.
Here's another reason why this happens: you can only get so much finished product out of a barrel of crude. Oil from certain areas of the world result in higher yields of certain things like gasoline or heavy fuel oils. Our oil being thicker yield more heavy distillates, coke, fuel oils, etc. Whereas the US market demands more of the light end, aviation fuel, gasoline, propane. As well as dozens of byproducts like propane, napthas and gas feedstocks used in manufacturing. US refiners convert 49% of crude into gasoline, where our oil would yield significantly less.
@johnjohn, ????? Frackers produce light sweet. What are you talking about? You’re defeating your own argument. We’re only producing around 13 million barrels of crude per day and the oil companies are exporting 3-4 million barrels per day of that. We consume over 16 million barrels of crude oil per day. Do the math. They want us to pay what Europeans pay for gasoline cause they make a boatload more profit. What’s happening is all BS, not America First, and they were doing the same under Trump.
You have got it backwards with respect to the characteristics of our oil mix. The fracking revolution results in a lot of light sweet crude. Our refineries were modified in the late 1970s especially to handle imported heavy sour crude, because Venezuela is nearby, and has the largest reserves in the world. The lightness of our crude is why diesel is expensive in comparison to gasoline, while historically diesel was cheap, which was trucks and trains utilized it. (Also, diesel engines probably have longer lives).
The U.S. built 100 nuclear power plants and each plant can & will contain multiple nuclear reactors. Also, there are multiple grades of oil. Some is thin and some very thick. Refineries are usually optimised for certain grades. Thus, you will mix a thick crude with a thin crude. Note Argentine has to import crude to thin down its crude.
Ever heard of "tar sands" oil from Canada? It is sludge and takes a lot of refining which makes it cheap. In the US we produce a lot of "sweet" oil that doesn't need much refining but is sold at a higher price. The reason why the US does the refining and sells the sweet oil is because that is how Big Oil makes Big Profit!!!
Nice job! Very informative! As a 74 year old, energy independence means a great deal to me because I vividly remember when I purchased a locked gas cap for my car to prevent thieves from siphoning gasoline out of my tank. It was real. It did happen to me. And it happened immediately after the US was boycotted by other countries. So, I lived through this and will NOT forget it. I understand your points, but please do not underestimate how people view their real life experiences.
I remember it also. I just got my drivers license and then shortly we had the odd/even gas plan. You could only buy the very expensive gas on the day your plate matched odd or even. I remember friends and I were trying to figure out a way to siphon gas from the station's underground tanks. Oil independence is nice. But you only got what you got. So using it wisely is important. In WW2, US had a big advantage over Germany and Japan thanks to Texas oil which those two countries could not match. Probably going to be another troubled time when having the right resources will give the advantage. Maybe it'll be the US again. Maybe not.
It's too expensive to drill for oil in usa. Just like most Americans can't afford anythings made in usa. Making all of the iPhone's parts in the U.S. would push the price of the iPhone's components from $190 to around $600. “If the materials alone are costing $600,” says Rassweilier, “it stands to reason, that same iPhone could cost, perhaps, $2,000 at retail.” That's right. $2,000 for an iPhone.
@@starventure difference is Most American adults don’t have enough savings to pay an emergency $1,000 expense Bankrate's Mark Hamrick tells Fortune that it's "disappointing because it is an indication that so many Americans are living paycheck to paycheck."
@@starventure because iPhone is mostly made in China. Most and the latest iPhones are mostly made in China, but rely on components from all over the world. Apple has also shifted the assembly of older iPhone models to other Asian countries, namely India and Vietnam. Is the iPhone made in the USA? No, the iPhone is assembled in China, Vietnam, and India.
@@starventure just like your Boeing planes and everything else is largely made in China. More than 10,000 Boeing airplanes currently fly throughout the world with parts and assemblies built in China. Boeing Tianjin Composites Co. Ltd, located in Tianjin, is a joint venture with the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC).
It is way more complicated, eg, DE refinery takes heavy sour crude. Several years ago, Russkies were rumored to secretly financed anti fracking environmental groups to kill Pennsylvania east coast competition. Reason : At one time Delaware bought lots Russky oil, anti fracking protests back fired and helped buy miles of Canadian oil trains. Also, power plants switched to natural gas from PA. DE & NJ refines a very difficult high polluting high sulfur oil. The sulfur as H2S is recovered by Veolia (ex DuPont business) for high value sulfur based acids. In short, oil is refined in the locations best suited to the refinery.
Reading between the lines, I'm thinking the oil compan ies wouldn't make as much profit if they just sold and refined and drilled the oil here. There's a lot of information here, but I still think it boils down to greed for the big oil companies
which uses additives that everyone else can use. We don't use oil from other parts of the country, other than Alaska, is that it's difficult to transport here. We have no pipeline , but there was movement to build one. During Trump's presidency, we were shipping oil to California through rail but we have the sierra nevada, which made it very dangerous. Imagine East Palestine, with alot more flammables. although , in that case < i would want it burned.
@slewone4905 exactly it's more complex than the refineries can't take that type of crude. Not taking into account that the refined oil requires additives at what point is it better to refine then take profit then buy refined and add in the additives. It not always better to use what you produce
At 5:58 "interest rates hit all time lows" Quick fact check, that statement is not correct. 10 year US treasuries in 2008 for the first 10 months were ~4.0%. Yes there was a sharp drop off but that lasted 9 months and were at 3.79% on 6.19.09. Why is this important, the petroleum industry is capital intensive and to do an NPV calc, the discount rate is a KEY driver of the calc. To use a DR based on the 10 year with a temporarily very low rate would get the analyst fired.
My brother is an operator in Ponca city Oklahoma his unit refines American oil all the time. Bakkan oil after the turnaround they went from 80k to 95k barrels a day. In that unit. A need to update your information would help your information.
I remember the gas shortages of the 70’s and the bumper stickers “Burn Jews not Oil”. Hope we do not go back to those days!! Overall Great Video! I was unaware about how we were unable to process our own oil…
Well I think you pointed out the production problem and the processing issues very well however you said it when you mentioned the EPA.The EPA envisioned as a force for good environmental protection in manufacturing has effectively driven out or destroyed a lot of industries in the USA.American companies don’t mind refining in other places and wasting more energy to ship it back and forth across the waters of the planet.I think polluting the rest of the World just to maintain a standard of living here in the USA is risky.The efficiency of a country is in its ability to manufacture the goods and services it needs.Pharmaceuticals,textiles,”food”and yes energy must be brought back here to the USA.The EPA is not a law making body and should not be in charge of policy.I think we need to find better refining solutions and lower the costs to building new top of the line refineries here in the USA.
@franksullivan1873 That is the real problem with American businesses. Every business tries to minimise costs & maximise profits, but that shifts some cost to other (unsuspecting) industries. Overall, what the businesses save, the country loses. There must be a financially efficient & holistic national policy (humongous work for the administration, but not too difficult in this age of AI).
@@MrPoornakumarI agree and the greatest threat to life on this planet is the problem of plastics not being reused or recycled.There must be a worldwide solution by all nations.Plastic production is the real need of oil production.Yes the oil is needed to make practically everything that our modern world uses.Oil is going to continue to be a need of manufacturing for a long time….unfortunately.
@@franksullivan1873 I agree with you, that recycling is the need of the hour & must be done. For the last three, four decades every person is adding so much of daily wastage. Biggest problem now is management of this "waste" with an auxiliary limb of recycling. Plastic is most amenable for recycling. Your mention of oil comes next.
And the next new Paradigm (for your next video Nathan) is USA going Green but only so that it has more Oil to Export. This is one of the reasons why, surprisingly, Texas is a leader in building Wind and Solar Farms. Yes they are following the cynical COP28 plan where countries use Oil Profits to reduce their own countries Carbon Footprint (like with vast Solar Farms in Saudi, etc) whilst making more Oil available to sell to poorer countries abroad. So Gulf States are opening up more markets in Asia and Africa whilst Texas and New Mexico are concentrating on Latin America.
I remember back in the early 2000s, I would drive out to visit my dad in West Texas, and I had to go through the Roscoe Wind Farm. Knowing what the area had looked like just ten years earlier, it was very surreal seeing wind turbines as far as the eye could see (at that time it was the largest wind farm on earth). Especially at night when each turbine was topped with a red warning light, it was easy to imagine an invasion of alien war machines. 😁
Not surprising at all. Energy is energy. Unfortunately, Texas is also removing cropland and installing solar farms, because the land is already flat, that's where they buy up the land for those. I've nothing against solar, but I'd rather they cleared scrubland and left the farms alone. San Angelo, Texas had 2 large solar farms that used to be cotton and sorghum fields.
Texas chemical engineer here.
not sure if you touched on this but a big reason we import oil to texas is due to texas’ unique oil refineries built to refine heavy hydrocarbons and generally “nasty oil”. many countries have no means of refining their oil and will sell their crude for cheap to the few countries that can refine it.
Exactly right. I just replied to a user above who erroneously said it was more expensive to import crude. As you mentioned, US refineries are designed for the heavy crude, and heavy crude is sold at a discount in the international market.
It's also a case of its near(ish) to a lot of heavy crudes to the south.
It's funny, because where I'm from (Australia) there is just loads of gas and LPG.
Thicker oil have longer chain hydrocarbons, correct? Aren't they better fort making plastics and lubricants?
@@maxheadrom3088 @maxheadrom3088 Correct. I think it has been touched on somewhere in this comments section.
Sounds like chocolate to me.
Your explanation of refineries leaves out an important detail: you can’t make all the products from any one kind of oil. To continue with your analogy, strawberry oil can only make butane, propane and gasoline, while chocolate oil can also make gasoline, but is the only thing that can make airplane fuel and bunker oil. Heavy oil makes heavy products, light oil makes light products. You can’t get everything we use from either kind.
Cracking hydrocarbon chains into different lengths is all they are doing, gasoline, diesel, kerosene, jet fuel, and plastics creation are all from the same oil
I agree. My first job when I left school in the 1960s was working in a UK oil refinery and the first area I worked on what what we called Products Blending where we mixed different types of petroleum (crude) from various parts of the world to get the optimum output for the market. I remember that the Saudi crude for instance, was so viscus it had to be heated with steam before it could be moved along pipelines whereas other crudes could be as thin as lubricating oil. But the one factor that always seems absent from the "stop drilling oil" advocates is plastic and the world's total reliance on it. I'm not talking about plastic bags but electrical insulation plastics. Stop pumping crude oil and there's no more plastic insulation because its made from crude oil and that means no electricity, none, anywhere, from any source. No electricity means not only no communications but no water, no modern drugs, no food, no commercial transport, etc, etc. The world's population, at least the very few that survived, would revert to the pre industrial era. Stop pumping crude oil and global warming becomes just a minor inconvenience.
Substitute won't for can't.
@@petemulhearn7787 It's amazing how short sighted most people are. I'm probably a bit younger than you, but I can still remember the time when absolutely everything wasn't made of plastics.
@kingofnothing2260 only real difference is cost of refining the different types of oil example heavy or light refining bitumen is cost and water consuming but yes not much difference in the carbon chain fracking produces lots of condensate very volatile fluid good for military weapons jet fuel
The United States has light sweet crude oil. Which refines almost one for one into gasoline. A little less into kerosene. We import heavy crude because you can get gasoline, diesel, kerosene, carbon chains used in plastics and even fine sand used in pool filters we get from heavy crude.
This is the correct answer!
LTO aka shale oil is unconventional. So it's about Real crude vs LTO
Gasoline and propane also butane. Popular fuel from Car to cookout grilling also butane for lighter to ignition. From light brown crude oil in America.
Is also because lots of us refineries are set up to refine heavy crudes not light crude like WTI
the refineries i worked out said they only get 1/3 gasoline and 1/3 diesel or number 2 fuel oil and everything else from tar to butane is the remainder, so they take a lot of the diesel and run it through crackers to make it into gasoline.
While I'm not a chemical engineer, I have been associated with marine logistics since the late 80's and for the last 29 years I've been employed by one of North America's largest independent petroleum refining and marketing company, currently managing international logistics for both US and European imports/exports. All that said to point out that this video is very educational to the lay person who is inexperienced in petroleum refining, marketing, and logistics. I'm actually going to begin using this "strawberry and chocolate" analogy in training new hires and interns in our organization.
We will need oil even if it is no longer fuel. Still need it for medial supplies, lubricant's, computer parts, car parts, etc.
All those things can be produced without oil. Oil has just been the easiest way. As the bottom falls out of the fossil fuel market oil may not remain the easiest and cheapest source.
Elemental sulfur is probably the most important usage, with over 90% of sulfur supply coming from the desulfurization process. Where would we be witthout the "king chemical" sulfuric acid.
@@ronvandereerden4714 The primary ingredient in tyres is oil. Think asphalt shingles on house roofs, waterproofing materials in construction, plastics, some pharmaceuticals etc . We will always need oil.
Feed stock for Plastics - and no "ronvendereerder4714" Oil can NOT easily be replaced for that usage, even by Coal which is the next best option.
Twenty years ago the head of the International Energy Agency, a UN agency, was in my office talking to a Saudi official. He said, "Petroleum is such useful stuff. You can make plastics, drugs, all kinds of stuff out of it. And do you know what we do with most of it? We burn it up."
How can you not mention the Jones Act? This plays a HUGE part in why the US exports and imports rather than moving it around our own country
Hey Luke!
Thanks for pointing this out. You're correct that the Jones Act impacts why the US can't easily ship oil from places like Texas to different parts of the country without a pipeline. This isn't the only reason oil is swapped with other countries-as outlined in the video-but the limitations on shipments between American ports are yet another economic reason to import oil. Quite frankly, I meant to include this in the video, but I missed this point.
To hopefully pick up this slack a little bit, albeit in a comment, here's some info on the Jones Act for those interested:
The Jones Act is a US federal law from 1920 that requires goods shipped between two American ports (e.g. Texas to California) to be shipped on an American built, owned, and operated vessel. (Interestingly, the ship at the beginning of the video is one such ship called the "Texas Voyager" which is Jones Act compliant.) This rule, intended to protect domestic shipping interests, effectively limits the competition on these trade routes, which can lead to higher costs. Evidently, it's not always too expensive to comply, as some oil tankers do, in fact, move between American ports. But sometimes this extra cost can make the difference.
So, as I mentioned in the video, oil refiners generally will take the cheaper option, and the Jones Act is one more reason it can be more expensive to use American oil.
I hope this helps, and my apologies for not including it in the main video!
- Nathan
@@kuczgreat reply. you should consider doing a video on the Jones Act, raising awareness to the economic problems its causing.
left out zionist organized crime controls oil and gas in the usa ,except for tex.
Gotta protect those overpriced unions
Gotta export all jobs to the lowest foreign bidder? @@gregallen7045
Chemical Engineer here, all 35 years of my experience has been in petroleum refining. Your video is surprisingly accurate but somewhat misleading. Economics and environmental permits/regulations are driving 95% of the decisions. It's just cheaper for a refinery to buy foreign oil than to spend $5 - 10 Billion (that's with a B) to convert just one refinery to American oil. In addition, it can easily take 5 - 10 years to get the permits that would allow you to make the conversion. And before the haters go off on "Yeah but refineries make $10 Billion a day" - they don't. Seasonally and during maintenance they can easily lose $10 MM plus per month. In addition, a refiner doesn't control the price of either its feedstocks or products, they float on their respective commodity markets so it's an incredibly high risk business with massive capital requirements and almost infinite liability. For comparison, imagine if Apple couldn't control the sales price of an iPhone.
Thank you for lending your expertise. Can you explain Trump era $2 per gallon prices followed by the huge jump in fuel when Brandon strangled domestic oil production under the guise of protecting the environment?
The rising gas prices the last few years are the result of a number of reasons. #1 OPEC (middle east oil producing countries) cutting oil production. #2 Venezuela collapsing as a global oil producer and #3 Russian oil is largely being boycotted now as a result of their criminal invasion of Ukraine. The United States is now producing more oil than ever before which is great but we are only one part of a global supply chain. Supply globally is down therefore prices are up
@tomking7367 production is up
massively during biden. They're public records...
Oil production collapse post pandemic oil demand collapse.. of course there's wrinkles in the oil/gasoline markets...
Then add huge war with 3rd largest production, second largest exporter... that wouldn't effect oil/refined products price a bit.... nah, not a bit.
So why don't they build a refinery they need in Mexico. Run a pipeline down from Texas & a return pipeline for refined products ?
@@christianbrown2298
Demand for oil is UP!
That needs mention.
2 types of crude, sweet and sour. We have mostly sweet in America so most refineries were sweet until the 70s oil embargo.
Oil companies spent billions to redo refineries to sour (middle east) crude.
Sweet refineries can't process sour, but sour refineries can process sweet crude (but get less end product).
I used to work for an oil company and had an orientation day at a refinery. This is what they told me.
I have worked in the oil and gas industry for years. When you talk about strawberry and chocolate oil you are somewhat mistaken. The difference is what they call heavy oil (Bitumen) and thin light crude oil. The technology to modify heavy oil into thin light crude oil exists and we use it in Canada a lot. We process it in an upgrader and then it can be refined in a regular refinery.
Called catalytic cracking of the heavier crude. Main issue is sulfur content for refineries.
Process the oil to lighter one have been there for ages, you don’t call it tech!
@@vickclash7955 Very high tech. Chemical engineering tech. Involves PT relations and catalysts.
@@vickclash7955 "Tech" is simply something man-made that we use to create something that otherwise wouldn't exist. It has nothing to do with how new or innovative it is. It's short for technology.
That idea was covered... The U.S. doesn't currently really have such, and political is against investing in creating those different refineries. Am I mistaken?
Geologist here. Conventional oil isn't a "puddle," it exists in the pore spaces of porous reservoir rocks like sandstone and limestone. Shale has a much lower permeability, making fracking necessary to economically extract those hydrocarbons.
Doesn't it pollute the underground water?
@@michaelmaya7742 not initially :) ... my fear has always been - what happens to the concrete and steel casing that go well below the water table to get to the fracked oil - over time will these containment measures crack due to earthquakes or simple concrete and steel decay - allowing the oil from abandoned wells to seep up into the water table (oil floats and just a table spoon of oil can contaminate thousands of gallons of water). Think land based Deep Water Horizons all over the Permian Basin - including large sections of the Ogallala Aquifer. Oil companies seem confident this can't happen - but ...
Just bc its an effective means of producing the product, doesnt mean its an ethical means to do so
@michaelmaya7742 One of the bigger problems with fracking isn't pollution of aquifers but how the leftover water is disposed of (almost all that's pumped down to frack is taken back out again)
Because oil/gas exploration in the USA is exempt from EPA rules, chemically contaminated used fracking water has been repeatedly dumped into nearby waterways with the expected effects you can imagine
Over on this side of the Atlantic, environmental law compliance costs make almost all gas/shale fracking uneconomic
"Peak oil" was passed around 2004 (1973 for the continental USA). What's left is heavier crudes and tight oils and whilst more oil might be being pumped it costs way more to get it.
In real terms oil is unimaginably cheap compared to the 1960s and USA fuel really should be close to $9/gallon if mid-century profit margins were being maintained. That's not helped by the Saudis and others having stopped investing in new intrastructure and simply pumping to make profits until the equipment dies - at some point there's likely to be a big snap in prices and fuel will pass $15/gallon (it's already $9/gallon in most of the rest of the world. USA fuel has the lowest tax component of virtually western democracy)
I worked the other end. Most of which came from Alaska.
Rebuilding a coke unit at the end of the refinery process.
The coke at that end was mostly carbon with enough sulfur content to have to export it overseas.
You could boil out the sulfur and use the carbon left over to make steel.
Some countries do not have a problem with that.
Since US oil is freely traded, it goes to the highest bidder which isn’t necessarily a US refinery. It can be cheaper for US refiners to purchase foreign crude rather than domestic.
US Crude is generally better.
@@mynameisgladiator1933 No it's not.
@@mynameisgladiator1933 Crude oil is crude oil my dude, no matter where it's drilled🤣
@j4genius961 I thought there was a high-quality crude oil called " sweet crude oil 🛢." What is that all about???
@@j4genius961That is not true at all.
Puerto Rico has tons of gas and oil resources, as per its recent investigation. Why the US says its limited resources can be due to security protection. With Puerto Rico being only 500 Miles away from the richest oil basin in the world (Venezuela), its time to build US Port of the Americas, and other deep sea oil bases to extract it, such as Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana is doing.
Around here (Delaware River), once home to the largest oil refining complex on the East Coast, eight refineries at its peak, only four remain due to deindustrialization and foreign competition. They import tons of crude from Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Angola, Venezuela, Mexico, Norway, Scotland, Iraq, Newfoundland, Canada, Colombia, Gabon, Congo, Chad, and the former Soviet Union. Those refineries here were built to handle those types of crudes along with crude from Texas.
why would you even bother to build a refinery if it would not do the job of the material you have.. their oil didn not change ..lol where did they get the clean oil to refine it at.. if they only have hard to refine crude oil.. that just dont make sence at all... build what you need ..or its a waste of time and money....
@@caynehampton1878 NewFoundland is in Canada.
@BasePuma4007 it's in Chicago
so the conclusion is : US refineries were not competetive ... to stand the competition .... the price ruled the US out ... sounds simple to me ...
Sometimes oversimplifying things ends up straying from the meaning. California policy has made it so difficult to pump oil out of the ground that there is no economic way it can compete with foreign oil. The Biden administration's ban on expanded pipelines means that any additional domestically sourced oil absolutely cannot be used in America as the transfer apparatus is already at capacity. The Biden promise to shut down the fossil fuel industry in 10 years means that there is no reasonable source of funds to modernize existing refineries. The Jones Act also prevents domestic oil from being moved by ship to excess refining capacity and there is only so much trains and trucking can do while still making any economic sense. Trying to explain this topic with any degree of accuracy without a comprehensive analysis of the broken US political system is impossible.
So you are saying that it is more a Political Question than a Practical one. Yeah, Nobody can deal with California, It should just be DELETED from the American number of States, and Go back to 49 States, Because they are not worth the Problems Involved.
A simple clarification on the Jones Act. It simply starts that foreign ships cannot transfer anything from 1 US port to another US port.
This law needs to be abridged to allow the use of foreign-flagged ships to carry US goods within the US waterways when needed.
Thank you, well stated
Excellent! Thank YOU !
Why should there be government funds (your money) for private profit companies, especially gigantic profit companies? F them if they can't compete. That's how capitalism works.
The strawberry and chocolate analogy is good, but you could have also used the real technical terms in tandem for real informative and educational value
The "strawberry and chocolate" bit was fine for kids 10 and under... but really... "light" and "heavy" oils and their relevance to refineries can be quite easily explained.
@@maxhugenchocolate covered strawberries
EIA Annual Energy Outlook sees production of crude oil and distillates remaining at current levels (around 12-13 mmbd) through 2050. Even that seems very optimistic.
@maxhugen There's more than just heavy and light oil. There's also sour and sweet oil. Some refineries use a blend of oils to get a mixture they can process. Some refineries can only process sweet oil and others can process both sweet and sour. Those refineries are more complex. Marathon refinery in Texas City is an example of a very complex refinery.
You know I guess he is just trying to white wash shale oil and it’s very sour if I m not wrong which results in higher corrosion of vessels and lines also it’s highly polluting in comparison to sweet crude. It just feels like another propaganda news piece from shale oil lobby
It is simple economics and government regulation…..Refineries were built to process cheap heavy crudes because that’s what was imported when they were built while most US oil production is lighter crude which commands higher prices. You won’t convince any refinery to spend billions to convert refineries to use higher cost feedstock it doesn’t make sense as it’s a negative ROI. Now we could have new refineries using the higher cost feedstock we produce to make refined products for export but the EPA pretty much prevents new refinery construction to save the whatever ( fish, bird, bug, etc) of the moment.
Try the water you drink and air you breathe. Oil refineries don’t kill certain species, when they pollute they kill everything. Even people over time.
Pretty sure you could build a refinery but will be expected to clean up your own mess or on the hook if you get people sick. They don’t want to be responsible for that
One thing never mentioned is that all of US transportation n(cars, trucks, trains, planes) amount to only about 30% of the oil usage in the country. Aside from transportation, there are over 8,000 products that are derived from oil - going from bug spray to medical filters.
Transportation is 28% of the TOTAL energy usage, not just oil. Petroleum products make up 90% of the 28%. And 66.6% of petroleum products are used for transportation.
A lot of industrial and chemical products can also use NG, and it makes little sense to use something more expensive. And I would agree, that isn't all products either.
We can reduce our overall costs by switching to electric, and greatly improve our standing in the world political arena, and keeps us out of oil wars. This is especially true, if everyone puts up solar panels, because they count as 'efficiency' because tracking a 10kw home system isn't worth anyone's time to track unless you are in Europe. Germany does because they are desperate to look good and is the largest country (about the size of California). In total Europe uses about as much oil as we do in the US and they have to import 90% of it so are we paying for a war for us, or them.
It doesn't mean it will happen overnight, or that the tech like EVs works for everyone today. It works for SOME people. Let them.
The tech can and will improve. We just didn't have anyone working on it.
@@madflower8723
EVs rely more on oil, gas and coal for their existence which is why the components are mostly manufactured in China and other foreign countries. And how is the electricity to be generated minus coal and natural gas? And Germany is experiencing an energy crunch by trying to go exclusively on renewable energy, just not panning out!
@@Scottar50 Probably would help if they didn't close all their nuclear power plants. But sadly humans are still often ruled by fear, rather than good sense.
@@andrewkuebler4335
Sadly true, not only for nuclear power but other things like anthropogenic climate change.
@@madflower8723 Gas & diesel are by far the most efficient way to propel vehicles. And those EV's that you appear to love need roads, too... and guess what?
About 10% of the oil that we use, is used to make asphalt to build & maintain those roads.
There is a new refinery in Odessa, Tx. (Midland) that refines sweet oil.
SWEET!
Into what?
@@lesliehorwinkle Gasoline
I worked in North Dakota in the oil. It was the cleanest oil, I ever seen.
Dinosaur country💎
@@Zoe-c9z
Oil based MUD used in drilling is terrible no matter how clean it is...H&P flex III "used to be"
Th U.S. can and often does produce more oil than it needs, but here the rub. The U.S. has lite sweet crude oil which is worth a premium, and we built refineries to process heavy crude (dirtier oil). The reason- it was more profitable to sell our oil to other countries and buy Crude oil to process for domestic use despite the cost of shipping it to the other side of the world, It’s all about the benjamin’s
The massive amount of oil produced from the Baaken Field in N Dakota isn't oily at all. Industry parlance calls it "condensate" {the stuff that condenses in natgas pipes} or "natural gasoline"-stuff that is even thinner than diesel.
I spent 8 yrs in north dakota hauling oil and working on neighbors rigs I made some Good money. I miss the money.
The old pumpers called natural gas condensate "drip"
It would run a gas engine, but if didn't add some oil it would lock an engine up.
@@neonjoe6180 yeah--the drips condensed inside the top of cold steel pipelines- Not much for "oil" but it sure blows up easy {Lac Magantic, Quebec}-
Wrong, at the refinery I worked in we got rail cars in with crud from the Dakotas. We fedd it right into the feed streams.
@@MB-wn9cv wow they figured out how to "fedd" that "crud" to the regular oil streams, eh? That must make my correct statement incorrect to you.
The Alaskan, while plentiful, is also sour oil, which requires more refining.
The American refineries are good for sour oil, which Venezuela also has.
The Alaskan oil refinery was in North Pole which was the town that I grew up in and I remember that almost everyone's father at school used to work for the Oil refinery or was in the Military. One of my friends dad was a Cobra Helicopter pilot and he used to fly overhead many times. Fun place to grow up and we never had the oil crisis of the late 70s and early 80s because of the oil refinery.
Sour oil is high sulphur, no big deal, by the way the US has known reserves that will last over 500 years. I spent my life in the industry and I am 75. Iran has 800 years for the whole world. Russia can handle another thousand. The Arabs need to look a little deeper
Very well explained. Could there be also environmental reasons? You have done a better job explaining than most of our media here in the US.
Access to good information is what we investors need to progress financially and generally in life. here's a good one and I am grateful for investing digital market..
🚩FACT🚩
The gas in your local gas station is still saudi gas, NOT AMERICAN. The saudi royal mafia has quietly amassed quite a portfolio of American energy assets that includes full ownership of America’s largest oil refineries🤷♀️
I don’t understand why we want to leave it in the ground. Could you expand on that a little?
You part of the climate zars
I love how bots below you just had an unrelated conversation on stocks. Really dumb.
Dr. Michael Hudson explained it in economic terms in his book, Superimperialism. Profits are taken in Panama. On the ledger, there is a column called international. Panamanian flagged tanker go into Houston with crude prices jacked up. Output/input ratio held low, taxes are avoided due to the appearance of low refinery profits. No new refineries are built as they are not profit centers. The profit center is a ledger in Panama. Another international dollar zone with flagged carriers is Liberia.
Oil crunch in the U.S.A was in the 1970s not 1980s. I remember waiting in long lines early in the morning to get gas for my car to travel to college.
We played nerf football with whoever was in line that day XD
I helped deliver gasoline in the 70’s. There was no shortage, our large tanks were full. It was a control issue like Covid.
Kent state?
These people talking aren't old enough to remember or learn anything
@@TerryChambers7
I seriously doubt that. OPEC cut off oil shipments to US - protesting US support of Israel.
California government is working on shutting down all oil production in the state, so eventually almost all oil will have to be imported at international market prices into the state, raising prices for everything more than it already is.
Source? Only one I saw got shut down recently was because of COVID demand issues.
Dang 😂 What is wrong with American politicians??? I thought African and Banana Republics were bad. American politicians have gone ROGUE. Take for example $94 billion dollars to ISRAEL 🇮🇱 and UKRAINE 🇺🇦. Most Americans don't agree but the politicians from both parties are pushing it. Even those opposing it are doing so out of pretext to appear they care about the borders. Even those congressmen who outrighly oppose the International aid may be the "controlled opposition ". They are there to make the population feel at ease that the system works. 😅😅😅😅😅
these people do not realize they are burning Russian oil in their cars in commiefornia ..oil from Russia -to India/refined-shipped to commiefornia
@@strawdemindset greasy gruesome newsom has been systematically closing down oil production refining and any industry that uses chemicals like the chrome plating industry since he got in office to thye point that Chevron is leaving the state it's home state
@@snapon666Excellent!
It's about time we weaned ourselves off these toxic and destructive industries. If humanity survives it will have to reset from these dead end technologies, which only destroy the environment and peoples health.
All oil is not equal in chemical composition, hence not all oil can be used for the same purposes. Most of our oil is not fuel grade oil, although we do have sweet crude production. We trade our oil to countries that need what we have in exchange for the types of oil we need here in the U.S. There are also oils that are still to young to produce, the oil needs to cook a little bit longer. Oil and Natural Gas are the result of natural geologic processes, and as long as those processes continue, this planet will never run out of oil and natural gas.
abiogenesis?
They can definitely run out... If we use them up faster than they can be replaced...
@@Underground-Echoes we will run out of oil about the same time we run out of people who spend their lives acting stupid and unemployed; I'll let you choose which one you believe does the most harm.
@@jefferyeis9287
The 1973 oil crises happened. Rocks don’t lie. We should be prudent
Well it takes eons to replentish after after an Epoch.
If you use someone else’s oil first, they run out first. If you have enough oil of your own you only use it to keep them from bankrupting you while you use their oil so you can maintain a reserve. In the meantime some will try to get national agreements to limit oil use, which no one using the oil in their right mind would ever agree to until they find themselves running out of oil. Yet weirdly some people for various reasons don’t really seem to be in their right mind, so one might assume that someone is financing, or benefiting them financially. 🤷🏻♂️
This is a well done video and one of the few that accurately attributes the fracking revolution to the genius of a Greek immigrant named George Michell.
I am a third generation independent oil producer it needs to tell viewers that the last generation refineries were built in US in the 1970s when it was widely believed US oil production of strawberry or sweet crude oil with low levels of sulphur had peaked.
Therefore these refineries must be designed to process chocolate crude oil which is high sulphur crude oil requiring stainless steel for corrosion control and is more expensive.
..and then there's those pesky wars , going on. Humbly repent and know Jesus everyone, His shed blood payed the price of sin, is the only way to God and eternity in heaven.
If one is going to refine Canadian tar and Venezuelan heavy crude.
In addition, most refineries go 1 -2 years between process turnarounds so citing the orignal data of construction is quite misleading
Thanks for the clarification, JohnMills.
why were no new refineries built since the 1970s?
@@OliverdeClisson If you build something that takes decades to be profitable, then 30 years later realize you build the wrong type (original 70s refineries), would you do it again?
New refineries take a lot of time and capital to build, all for type of fuel that may not be popular 30 years from now.
I remember reading an article years ago by an oil expert who said when we start to rely and use Shale Oil in great quantities then we're in the downslide of fossil fuels. He said it's too expensive to drill, is full of impurities and needs a ton of additives so when we start to use this instead of high grade oil it's a good indication that the industry has peaked.
We entered the era of Resource Wars back in 1990, and it's why there's been so much conflict in the Middle East. If you look closely at all the countries that have some form of conflict also have gas or oil reserves. Even the current mess in Gaza, there is Gas at the heart of the issue. There are Natural Gas fields off the coast of Gaza, and I would say that is one of the reasons for the conflict in Gaza or why the Western world won't interfere. As Israel has already given drilling rights to some Western companies. In the future we're going to see further conflicts over precious metals, as well as water and food plus a plethora of other natural resources.
Nearly all wars have always been about resources. What were they doing the past 6,000 years? It's bit of a stretch to say it's now an era of resource wars because "reasons".
There has been wars and fighting long before the 1990’s, since the ottomans were driven out and new lines were drawn by the allies. This is the real start of the mess.
Most likely that article is very out of date. Techniques and me to odd improve with time and shale became much more abundant to the point of the USA still being oil neutral and being a leading exporter
You are really conflating correlation with causation with oil/gas being at the center of all the conflicts in that region. It also ignores ethnic tensions that have been there since forever
You can thank the Obiden admin and demorats for our current and future catastrophic problems. They were in charge and implemented the policies that are causing every major poblems in the US.
@@Izokaytobewite
Democratic results like a booming economy,
increaing wages,
inflation caused by the invasion started by Trump's bromance partner now brought down,
necessary overdue work on infrastructure being done,
investments in the move away from fossil fuels to reduce long term climate change while still having American oil production hitting record levels to deal with things now when the terrorist Russian state is an unreliable supplier of fossil fuels to the world and
legislation to better secure the border if Trump and Johnson would stop blocking the legislation.
And of course a huge change from the President Trump era when Trump spouted hate for non-white people, Immigrants and refugees and emboldened white supremacist groups thus making non-white people feel unsafe.
So exactly which of these improvements do you hate and why do you hate improvements to the country?
Nigeria''s Dangote refinery will be refining some of these oil.
Albeit most inefficient.
Its honestly a much better long term plan to import as much foreign oil as possible till global oil supply starts to dwindle. Purchase up and use other countries oil reserves and conserve our own till either we will be the only country to have enough access to oil and can even export it as much higher prices
What you said is feasible IF our economy is strong and we have an affluent middle class. BUT such is not the case today.
The map is wrong - it's showing California and Rockes oil as being unuseable, in actual fact Arco has a LOT of refining capacity in California and a lot of our oil from the North Slope of Alaska and the Rockies gets fed into those refineries, along with Arco's own production in California.
the whole research behind the video seems dubious, e.g. why would you show Oman as a significant oil producer and omit Kuwait in the graph at 0:45 when Kuwait produces 20x as much...
It's as if these millennials get fractured, half truths from Google and make these "as a matter of fact" videos like they're experts
@@whiskeysk It's not literal. Just to give an idea but yes, regions are usually split by other than present day borders as the dinosaurs didn't know any better.
Oil extracted here is already promised to foreign customers. The price of oil products depends on processing capacity. Fewer plants guarantee higher prices & higher prices mean much more profit from reduced production, & all the costs that go with it. Export means filling tank cars & sending them directly to ports along the shoreline. Simplicity.
that hasnt always been the case....oil export ban ended by congress in 2015.....one of worst mistakes i think they ever did....
@charlesjackson9602 Right. We're talking about now.
@@wtf2203 and i am talking today...and tomorrow...until 2016 it was working not long ago....they wanted to get rid of new found natural gas...and to ukraine....is one reason it was passed...oil found here needs to stay here...its always a supply issue....not a abundance...cant shortside today for tomorrow..
@charlesjackson9602 . . . You a corporate man? I'm talking about where the decisions are made.
Not all refineries run off Heavy crude. Most of the inland refineries have been using light crudes. It is the ones on the coast that use them.
Thanks for that; I think in Texas, some oil is sweet, and other is sour....
@@TomMcinerney-g9b It's the middle. West texas Intermediante. Refineries are on the coast because that's where it's easiest to ship from, both ways.
Mycorrhizae fungi extracts N, P, carbon from the air and puts it in the soil for the plant in a symbionic relationship with the plant. This addition to farming would change the amount of carbon in the air, putting it in the soil for the plant. I do it, but it is rare for a farmer to - and I have never heard of a person on the left talk about it, or the right, for that matter. I use bacteria too, that extracts N from the air, and other that breaks down existing P in the soil, lots of P in the soil, everywhere man made fertilizer was used (it is not water soluable, until the bacteria changes that).
The north slope floats on oil. We have massive reserves. I don't think we know how big as drilling isn't allowed in many places.
There you go POLITICS again.
Well politics is the deciding factor so how do you not address politics?
@@scottcarr3264 How exactly do we run our society and make decisions? Politics you say? 🤯Every major issue is drowning in politics. You can't ignore it unless you want to have the understanding of a child.
@@okgroomer1966 No shit. Without politics there wouldn't be a society, much less Democracy.
@@accuratealloys
Truth!
By "Politics" people mean "leftist politics"! Which means recession! The right is almost always "pro-drilling' pro-consumer, pro-family, pro-business!
We need new refineries...desinged to process more of our oil
A new cancer valley lets go
@@legendaryz_ch Illinois refused to allow new refinery there a few years ago...
@@legendaryz_ch Cold and heat kill much faster than cancer.
Can they build one in your back yard?
I agree but that COST!! Doing some research I read it can cost from $5 to 15 billion dollars. And that is just one!
So 👉👈, what’s it gonna take to open those other 946 nuclear power plants!?
We want nuclear power! I need these nuka boys to give me a fusion reactor to power my Time Machine!
That’s not gonna happen. On PA, there is a plant nearby that has
two towers, they deactivated one and looking to shutdown the 2nd one. Nuclear is not profitable.
Nuclear plants aren't really a solution
Lmao right?
If we had 200% of our energy needs, your EV's would be way more popular and we'd all probably be breathing easier.
Feels kinda portant to mention that geostrategically speaking it's kinda advantageous to use up the other nations oil instead of your own.
So are you for geothermal energy
I think that you have the problem of crude types and refinery utilization a bit off. When US light crudes were plentiful, the refineries used that as their feedstock. As the production volumes declined, the refineries started looking for other sources of crude. Some of that was domestic and others foreign. When using heavier gravity crudes, additional processing steps are necessary to produce transport fuels. These additional steps are various cracking processes and hydrogenation processes. There is a tremendous amount of capital invested in these processes. As heavy crude sources were sought, Venezuela was the first source as it is nearby but is low gravity crudes. But it was thought to be a stable, large volume source. Once the Gulf Coast refineries were set up to process 25 degree API crude and lower gravity crudes, it doesn't mean that the refineries can no longer process the lighter crudes. The result is that if the refineries were to process more of the lighter crudes, their upgrader processes would then be idled for lack of feedstock. When Venezuela became politically unstable and production volumes began declining, the Gulf Coast refiners began sourcing crude from Canada and particularly the upgraded tar sands. The upgraded tar sands are very similar to Venezuelan crude. To put it into perspective, Venezuela once produced between 4 and 5 million barrels per day. The last time I checked, it was producing about 600,000 barrels per day.
California is its own separate market as is Oregon and Washington. California at one time exported crude and refined products. The crude types in California were of the heavier gravities. If I remember, the Kern River field near Bakersfield produced a 6 degree API crude. As a result, California refineries have long been designed to process heavier crudes in the 10 to 20 degree gravity.
As an aside, the main reason why gasoline prices are so high in California as compared to the rest of the nation is the level of tax burden. When I last checked, the total tax burden on gasoline in California is between $1.25 and $1.50 per gallon. Additionally, CARB has placed very stringent emissions limits on refineries to the point where the refiners are considering closing down refineries rather than add the equipment to meet the emissions standards. Chevron recently considered closing its Richmond refinery rather than meeting the new emissions standards. If you want to compare gasoline prices in California, compare them to the prices in Oregon and Washington.
This was a rather simple explanation, but I think that I touched on some of the key aspects with regards to source and supply. And actually, the last new refinery built in the US was at the former La Gloria OIl and Gas refinery in Tyler, Texas in 1978. It had been a ~15,000 bpd refinery and a completely new refinery was built on the site with a capacity of ~60,000 bpd with the entire output being unleaded gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. There were minor products such as petroleum coke and cut back asphalt. There was a pipeline that connected the refinery directly to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana to supply the base with jet fuel.
Oil is not just one commodity we export light sweet crude that our refineries can’t use and import the heavy sour crude we can. The problem is stupid government regulations that make new refineries almost impossible to build!
Thank the EPA for that.
There is a refinery that does handle sour crude and that one is the Delaware City Refinery in Delaware. I have heard that there are a couple of other refineries that can.
I also thank the EPA for clean drinking water and air that you can’t see (see India and China).
Yep, the most scary words, "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help"!
@@stefanl5183 Indeed! Do not trust them, I don't.
Ultimately in the end the shuffleing is how they control the the priceing.. When I was in High school ( im 80 now😅😅) I lived in south Texas just miles from Matamoros Mexico border town at Brownsville. We had the cheapest gas in America because the petroleum was driven across the border in tanker trucks 24/7 in a big.U turn circle into Mexico and ( imported back) into the Us and our gas was 12.9 cents a gallon for regular and 14.9 cents a gal for premiem. ( They didn't have no lead yet. It was great cause we were in the heyday of monster engine muscle cars.. It was a tax slight of hand trick. And diesel was protected by the DOE national cap to garantee the continued flow of US comerce. It was 9cents a galon for agg and rail and truckers. All us comodities move by diesel. Rail river( barges) and trucks. Right now the Mississippi is so low that barge traffic is highly difficult. If that river dries up it will cripple the largest supply chain in our country. No way trucking can meet the demand. Its a true crisis they aren't even mentioning it to the populas.Typical of our government. They never tell us about the real problems
That would cause nation wide financial colapse and famin.( Not really important 😂) Dandahermit
> " They never tell us about the real problems "
Funny thing about our media, eh...
Wow thanks for the info
God bless you, Sir. Thank you for your valuable insight. I myself drive a 96 Ford F-150, last year of the Cleveland/Windsor engines, because I know how to fix em, but damn gas was 80 cents a gallon when this was built. These newer cars can go a distance without gas, my truck needs gas daily and I work down the road.
... shuffling*, pricing*
There are different kinds of oil. Our oil is needed by certain countries for specific purposes like plastic while we need imported oil specifically for gas.
You are partly correct. If the political will is there we could build new plants to process what we produce.
We can already process everything we produce. The truth is it's about efficiency. Heavy crude makes more diesel, light crude makes more gasoline. That's the real reasons countries buy oil from each other. More efficient/profitable refining is attained by mixing to receive the highest quantity of the end product you want.
A while ago I read that the last refinery built in the US was in Louisiana in 1977, as he said. However, the same article also said that no new refineries would ever be built here because of declining demand. The US vehicle fleet has doubled in size since 2000, but demand for gas and diesel has fallen 40% in the same period, because the cars and trucks are much more efficient compared to 25 years ago, and because EVs are beginning to catch on. Consequently, the refineries that remain (every year a few close) are working at basically full capacity. So Donald's 'drill-drill-drill' is meaningless sloganeering. We don't have the refining capacity to process more oil, and it wouldn't affect the price of gas if we did, because the price of gas is based on the world price of oil which changes every day because of many factors beyond our control.
“Automobiles are much more efficient than they were 25 years ago” is a lie. The efficiency of our automobiles has not changed in any substantial way since the 1960s. In fact, during the 1970s efficiency actually went down as emission controls degraded engine operation. In the 1980s efficiency improved again when the industry introduced computer controlled fuel injected engines that could meet the emission standards without all the equipment of the 1970s. This brought engine efficiency back to around where it was before the ’70s. Since then there has been little improvement, and with diesel engines, it’s gotten worse due to new regulations. And because of regulations, most people no longer drive cars, which are more fuel efficient, but now drive trucks and SUVs which are worse. That could change if CAFE standards were removed and we could get bigger cars again, as more people would drive big cars instead of SUVs and trucks.
You do realize that drilling for oil in the us can be used as leverage when the Saudis try to increase the price of oil you flood the market with cheap American oil which causes the Saudis to drop the price which keep the price of fuel steady and in check when you stop that drilling you lose all leverage you have
My sister worked for Amoco (bp). She said there will never be a refinery shut down. They can not pay for the clean up.
Competition works to keep prices low for consumers until, that is, you have U.S. oil company executives colluding with OPEC/foreign oil companies to keep oil prices high. Then, when the Department of Justice investigates this illegality, over thirty members of the Congress of the United States of America try and shut the investigation down. Hurry up and guess which political party these "representatives of the people, for the people" belong to and I'll give you a "major prize".
Andrew J Myers👽
@@ethanlamoureux5306 The internal combustion engine hasn't greatly improved, but it has improved. The entire vehicle has improved, thanks to lighter materials, and wind tunnels, and computer modeling and computer control. Computers are the reason why EVs are actually feasible.
The big cars in the 70s got like 1/3 the mileage of the current F150 and are far less useful and safe.
While you may not like CAFE, it is right on the money, there wasn't as much incentive to improve the efficiency of the larger vehicles because getting a vehicle from 10mpg to 20mpg only resulted in 10mpg increase, and that meant they already had to sell one high mileage car to meet the standard, so they just needed to sell two, and that cost zero because the car was already designed, built, and tested. CAFE is smart.
They are importing oils and all rare earth materials so the US can have hegemony on energy, semiconductors, plastic, and fertilizer later when other countries export their resources for cheap money.
That’s part of it.
Thank you (and to many others who have commented already) for explaining that very complicated subject for me. I always new we've never been energy independent, but never truly understood why. I just always assumed it was because we consume more than we produce and that was it. I really appreciate the simplified explanation.
'They' don't want it to be too cheap. It's like rent, price is going bleed you.
The Investors who enjoy the Profits from Oil development, have controlled the Government since the 1940's.
The chart the site presents shows the amounts of oil produced since the Halliburton Administration began their efforts.
The US Currency has suffered as the Oil company Investors noticed profits.
The US Currency has demonstrated no visible support for the US Dollar for 20 years.
They earn piles of cash, but the value has diminished.
Like Wiemar Germany, they now provide what appears to be some form of Powerful Leader.
The image is like any Product, a corporate product and it does need to deliver good return on investment.
Too bad the Money that was created in 1970 no longer has any value.
It is always necessary to explain things in the simplest terms to a Seahawks fan….j/k, I appreciated this as well 😉
I worked on a US Flag tanker that brought crude oil from Prudhoe Bay Alaska to the west coast of the USA. We would only deliver crude oil there. A normal trip would be to take crude oil to Los Angles, California and then to Cherry Point, Washington. The crude oil was to be used for local refineries only.
Our refineries are able to use high sulfur crude whereas most refineries are not as efficient and not able to use it, oil is used for much more than just fuel. A fractional tower is used to crack the carbon chains into different products, at the bottom of the tower the heaviest products are pulled, asphalt tars etc at the top are the lightest products like ESTHERS ETHERS, and ALCOHOLS.
WE produce lightsweet crude which is easiest to refine...
If you ever do another video, please add some of the other super crucial factors that uphold this status quo - money/profit for a few vs cheap fuel for many (proudly sponsored by politics)
Please don't encourage him.
Fracking is not cheap and is economically feasible when gas prices are high. Using $3.25/gallon and above threshold, gas was at this level April 2008 to Sept 2008. This a 6 month spike. Given the capital investments, one better not be using a 6 month spike as the basis of estimating future gas prices. It is 3 years later before gas exceed $3.25 and that is March 2011 to Sept 2014. It was not until Russia invaded Ukraine in Feb 2022 did gas prices spike above $3.25. The problem with it, gas prices can and do vary, thus the profitability of fracking will move with a positive correlation. If prices drop significantly, then fracking cuts back on production, with lower production, the "strawberry" oil refineries don't have feed. The refinery has high capital costs and this variability is risk. Higher risk, higher discount rate, lower NPV to build or not build a refinery or do any capital intensive expenditure.
The US has enough oil to last at least another 500 years. There is over a trillion barrels of recoverable oil in Colorado alone. Utah, Idaho and Nevada also have large reserves that have never been touched. Natural gas reserves are much larger. States such as Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa have completely untouched reserves of natural gas. However, politics have prevented access to most of these massive reserves. There is now a law in MN that makes drilling for natural gas illegal.
#1 reason too many environmental laws about pipelines, refineries being built, & drilling .And forget oil companies want a shortage to keep prices higher for bigger profits
@@richardbergren6522 It’s a weird dynamic … oil and gas companies do want to keep prices high to make a profit (can’t say I blame them) but the supplies are so great that they can’t just buy up the supply and sit on it because they can’t …. So they turn to politics to make taping it illegal so no one else can do it till they change the laws in the future
Beginning to think oil companies like progressives because there are no real alternative energy sources and progressives like to keep energy costs higher than they need to be.
wow we could have ICE vehicles run on cheap domestic CNG/LNG then!
You should provide links to information proving that.
Also we keep those reserves for the huge military we have to maintain. Those reserves are for wartime use only.
No that is the SPR, which was drained by the irresponsible one.
Yes, but these days it’s for Ukraine war lol our governments run by idiots and traitors
@@churblefurblesdo you mean Joe Biden
Biden and ovomit both drained the oil reserves where president Trump filled them. The oil reserves are huge storage tanks
We’re going to need it soon
Yes, we need more refining here
Texas has a lot of sweet oil but they always lock off the wells you can only take one truck load of oil to be refined from each well
@frankmiller8779 our government is run by idiot administrators. If they could get out of the way things would improve dramatically
Whe I was a little kid back in the 1950-60’s growing up in western Nebraska, a lot of little towns, like Chadron NE, Sidney NE & Hot Springs SD, had their own little oil refineries for the local produced crude oil; the towns also had their own little (city owned) Coal Fired Power-plants, (since bigger is better) big business & competition plus Government Imposed environmental costs, are part of what caused the demise of those little refineries and power plants.
I wonder if local refineries had their own little brands of lubricating oils, greases, and other products.
@@gregorymalchuk272 It's easy to make diesel for tractors, which is prob. what they were doing. I worked a a small refinery outside Ventura Ca once and when I told the motel clerk what i was doing, she was incredulous that there was a dirty refinery that close by their beach. (I bet it's gone now, it was tiny)
So the EPA and the rules prevent new refineries.
1974 I called the EPA and said I was at monsanto seattle, and there was a chemical leak going into the Duwamish river. They said they had no one to send. My thoughts were that the EPA was a shakedown organization, and monsanto had already paid.
Mixing a little bit here, nuclear is usually used for electricity, while oil can be used for power, fuel, chemicals, heating, etc. electricity vs total energy need. Refiners could make a profit by using their refinery, while producers sell theirs on the free market.
I disagree. Nuclear is needed to run electric cars. If cars go electric other forms of energy will not be enough.
@@brucebarnes8138 I think the need to charge electric cars is a very little market for nuclear reactors. They just send baseload power to the grid.
Nuclear energy can provide the heat and hydrogen for oil refining, which would increase yield by 27%. Because we currently have to burn a portion of the oil residuals to get the heat and hydrogen for refining.
@brucebarnes8138
If we have electrified rail networks and public transportation, then the only thing that would need to use duel would be trucks and ships as people themselves would to taking trains. France in particular, runs basically everything off nuclear without much need for electric cars
US refineries can blend light sweet with heavy crude and easily process it. They make more money exporting the high quality US produced light sweet while we pay more at the pump. You’re being fooled.
Talking about this without mentioning the huge threat oil poses to our ability to survive on this planet makes it seem like these environmental regulations are backwards and don't make sense. True energy independence is only possible if we reduce consumption and essentially change the way we are living, otherwise we will be perpetually dependent on extraction.
Heavy sour crude (foreign) vs. the WTI sweet stuff (us) can easily be fixed by Canadian tar sand heavy bitumen, & domestic heavy sour from the Gulf Mex & North Slope.
"Barrel" was 42 gallons as a wine measure, with 40 net gallons and assuming 2 gallons will be lost to leaks and evaporation.
If you're losing 2 gallons thru Evaporation and Leaks, what kind of barrels are they using? This is hillarious. REALITY CHECK... They don't actually use barrels!
@@henryhill3778 Reality check. They used to use real barrels for wine. Still do. Read it a little more carefully next time.
Our light crude makes it possible for every component for device we all post comments from. The US has enough as of 2019 for at least 1000 years. Ive been poking holes in the ground for 20 years and oil isnt going anywhere
Over 4 million barrels of oil flow into the US from Canada every day.
How about using ethanol alcohol and methyl alcohol instead of oil drilling? After all they are superior than premium gasoline.
You do know that you need plants for that to make it right? It uses land that we use for food so the food prices will go up. In the west it would not be a real problem, but for 3 world country's it will be. But what is your problem with oil? It isn't from fossils, that was made-up by the Rockefellers to make it seem more scares. And climate change because of our Co2 is also BS. There is only 0.04% in the atmosphere. Of that 0.04% humans only are responsible for 3 % And the biggest polluters ( if you can call them that) like China are allowed to go on till 2030. While we in the west will destroy all our economies with this Green Marxists BS.
Is what Ford design the first models for burning moonshine , available across America and Canada, renewable resource
Few reasons for why that won't work at least not right away. First you'd need car companies on board most engines today can't take a pure ethanol blend it destroys them hence why E85 exists its not as bad on engines. Secondly it's only superior in emissions respect. You actually get less mileage on Ethanol as opposed to gas. I.e it produces less energy then gas. It's a great idea don't get me wrong but it won't work currently.
Ethanol has a lot of water in it and eventually destroys your engine. I use to believe it was a good product also. The other thing is it’s more expensive. Matter of fact they can only put ethanol into gasoline with government subsidies
@@hankogle6858 I was thinking ethyl alcohol not ethanol alcohol. Plus what about methyl alcohol?
You could have just said that the oil we have in the U.S. is light sweet and that our refineries are best at heavy sour. Regardless, oil as a commodity is a set world price. A barrel costs what a barrel costs, so we ship much of our oil to refineries in other countries because light sweet is actually easier to refine. As much as everyone wants the world to just flip a switch and change to renewables, it is not going to happen because it can't. There aren't enough batteries to store that energy, and with current tech, there can't be.
which is why nixon ordered nukes
US Oil has been switched for UAE Oil since the 80's, goes out tax free, comes back enriched and also taxable, win win for OPEC & the PetroDollar.
I been trying to get more ppl to understand that
I worked in a refinery Why can’t they blend some sweet crude and run it?
like 20% sweet crude to 75% heavy sour crude. Gasoline ⛽️ is blended. To maintain octane I know that
bro. we bring cold lake crude from Canada, because we need heavy oil, to produce asphalt and heavy oils, we mix this oil with Bakken oil from the Dakotas, wich is a lighter oil, to produce light products, such a s gasoline, diésel and jet fuel. bro.😂
Ummm .. if Canada lets us. After all, it is their oil. You talk like Canadian oil reserves are property of the USA. Hilarious.
Yup, literally some gen Z trying to act like he knows what's going on. No mention of Line 5, Keystone, Keystone XL, Trans-mountian etc. His quick picture shows a few Enbridge lines. And yes, there is a fight with Canada. Joe canceled Keystone XL on his first day in office. Canada is now looking to send its oil overseas, using Trans-mountian. The days of cheap Alberta oil to the US are over, and Joe caused it.
No one expected US crude to double in output so there are no domestic refineries available to process all this sweet crude and you are not permitted build a new refinery so only option is to export it. Simple.
Non permited ? When did that stop coorporate USA? TRY no good return on investment.
Simple change the rules, and build better infrastructures here at home. Not depending on foreign shipping, especially during these war times . National security issue. Be independent and self reliant as a free people. Simple.
Yeah, that has a lot to do with it, the EPA won’t let us build the refineries
@@chriauc2976 have you met the EPA? Those guys are personally dedicated to the destruction of all things commercial or capitalistic in the mindless pursuit of their environmental religion.. They worship trees, and would rather see a bare field of sagebrush and the occasional wildflower, than a plowed field producing agriculture, and feeding the world.
Although it would be difficult to site a brand new refinery, oil companies make new investments each year to maintain and adapt existing refineries. When I worked for Conoco, different refineries were competing each year to come up with projects with a good ROI so projects could proceed at their location. Having a project at your plant was good for your career, provided demand for local labor, and for engineers designing and building stuff is fun! The cost for permitting is a drag on profitability, but at least in the Gulf Coast states it doesn't stop projects.
Sounds like we need to invent a telescopic (variable length) distillation column pack.
The problem is we need refineries. We could be energy independent but not if the government actively regulates against it. If the government supported oil and refining we could. The government doesn't so we don't.
Or we need EVs, which keeps us out of the oil wars, and isolates the economy from oil price fluctuations which can be manipulated. It can reduce overall government costs especially if you can also talk everyone into installing solar, the overall long term costs drop considerably. There is far less need for EPA oversight for mining activities, or at the end use emissions. Then there is less need for an expensive grid upgrades, and NO ONE knows how much energy we are actually using. Which makes us look really good as a country on the world political stage. They can guesstimate, but it isn't worth the governments time to track every 10kw solar installation. I don't think anything larger then 1mw is tracked federally. The rules especially for under 20kw are pretty sparse even for utilities.
I would agree at this point, EVs don't fit the needs of everyone. The technology isn't quite there. Namely the 5 minute charge speeds, and chargers capable of delivering that kind of power. However, they work in certain circumstances. Namely if you can charge at home, and rarely travel outside the 300 mile range in a day. The technology will improve.
By Government, you mean Oil Co's. No, they don't care. You're the commodity to them. Mooooo.
Getting more into detail of the types of crude oil would've helped with the context as to why refineries can't just use any crude oil. One prime example, a lot of our gasoline and diesel fuel has to be made with imported crude from the North Sea (Brent Crude) because gasoline and diesel require light "sweet" crude which has a low sulfur content (sweet is used as a term for low sulfur crude). The only oil fields in the US that produce that are in West Texas and Pennsylvania and those fields are mostly tapped out. Fracking oil produced in the US is primarily heavy "sour" (high sulfur content) crude, which is fine for things like plastics, lubricants, etc but isn't economically feasible to refine into fuel. Gahwar field (Saudi Arabia) crude is light "sour" crude so can be refined into fuel though the process is more involved and costly to make fuel that meets EPA/EU emissions standards, but can produce fuel cheaply for countries with no emissions laws.
Dang it. I thought I was following. But earlier folks said the Middle Eastern oil was heavy crude, not light. And that fracking oil was light, not heavy.
I remember being those gas lines in the 70s, I even have a presidential physical fitness award signed by Richard Nixon! 🤯😅
Cool Know Jesus God loves you
Pretty good video, but the strawberry/chocolate terminology was counterproductive and insulting. How does that help explain anything? Do you think that most people can't handle the concepts of high/low sulfur and heavy/light oil? WTF?
Some of your information is incorrect!!
British Columbia Canada does send oil to California, by boat and pipeline!!
Alaska produces the most in America!! The mail land is pretty much tapped out and that is why they take Canadian oil and gas
Love the content. Refreshing to see proper journalism.
I have a question, if I may.
Namibia has recently been increasing oil production and it seems there are many players in Africa's newest oil rush. The US has recenty built a bunker of an embassy in Windhoek. No idea why such a statement needs to be made in a country which has about 2.5 million people. Perhaps it is because our former occupiers, South Africa, are now part of BRICS? Security or greed? Your data seems to favour the latter and our beautiful country will be destroyed by greed. Would be nice to see the players on the field and to see how the deals affect our small nation. We dont have the journalism that competes with your calibre. If anyone is interested in the story and needs to travel to Namibia. I will gladly assist.
Will you assist immune response against . We are being censored in Canada now please share Commissioners Report released in Ottawa: #nationalcitizensinquiry
More probably American insecurity (and there's always our greed). Tanzania, Kenya, and Libya are the countries where our embassies were attacked. Far, far from Namibia. I'm sorry.
Here's another reason why this happens: you can only get so much finished product out of a barrel of crude. Oil from certain areas of the world result in higher yields of certain things like gasoline or heavy fuel oils. Our oil being thicker yield more heavy distillates, coke, fuel oils, etc. Whereas the US market demands more of the light end, aviation fuel, gasoline, propane. As well as dozens of byproducts like propane, napthas and gas feedstocks used in manufacturing. US refiners convert 49% of crude into gasoline, where our oil would yield significantly less.
@johnjohn, ????? Frackers produce light sweet. What are you talking about? You’re defeating your own argument.
We’re only producing around 13 million barrels of crude per day and the oil companies are exporting 3-4 million barrels per day of that. We consume over 16 million barrels of crude oil per day. Do the math. They want us to pay what Europeans pay for gasoline cause they make a boatload more profit.
What’s happening is all BS, not America First, and they were doing the same under Trump.
You have got it backwards with respect to the characteristics of our oil mix. The fracking revolution results in a lot of light sweet crude. Our refineries were modified in the late 1970s especially to handle imported heavy sour crude, because Venezuela is nearby, and has the largest reserves in the world. The lightness of our crude is why diesel is expensive in comparison to gasoline, while historically diesel was cheap, which was trucks and trains utilized it. (Also, diesel engines probably have longer lives).
If only more people understood this...
Video starts at 8:16
You should also mention that the environmental regulations on building a Refinery make it extremely difficult!!!!! That's an important detail!
Why do you have over 100K views and only 54K subscribers? I actually learned something here and I'm going to subscribe! 😀
Me to awasome info
104k subs now 🤗
The U.S. built 100 nuclear power plants and each plant can & will contain multiple nuclear reactors.
Also, there are multiple grades of oil. Some is thin and some very thick.
Refineries are usually optimised for certain grades. Thus, you will mix a thick crude with a thin crude.
Note Argentine has to import crude to thin down its crude.
Ever heard of "tar sands" oil from Canada? It is sludge and takes a lot of refining which makes it cheap. In the US we produce a lot of "sweet" oil that doesn't need much refining but is sold at a higher price. The reason why the US does the refining and sells the sweet oil is because that is how Big Oil makes Big Profit!!!
Nice job! Very informative! As a 74 year old, energy independence means a great deal to me because I vividly remember when I purchased a locked gas cap for my car to prevent thieves from siphoning gasoline out of my tank. It was real. It did happen to me. And it happened immediately after the US was boycotted by other countries. So, I lived through this and will NOT forget it. I understand your points, but please do not underestimate how people view their real life experiences.
I remember it also. I just got my drivers license and then shortly we had the odd/even gas plan. You could only buy the very expensive gas on the day your plate matched odd or even. I remember friends and I were trying to figure out a way to siphon gas from the station's underground tanks. Oil independence is nice. But you only got what you got. So using it wisely is important. In WW2, US had a big advantage over Germany and Japan thanks to Texas oil which those two countries could not match. Probably going to be another troubled time when having the right resources will give the advantage. Maybe it'll be the US again. Maybe not.
EVs will phase out oil whether you like it or not.
Electric cars will reduce oil demand, maybe sharply, but you still need lubricants and some fuels. Not all of us want an electric car.
@@michaelbenardo5695 you will buy an EV and be happy.
@@michaelbenardo5695 you will own an EV and be happy
It's too expensive to drill for oil in usa. Just like most Americans can't afford anythings made in usa. Making all of the iPhone's parts in the U.S. would push the price of the iPhone's components from $190 to around $600. “If the materials alone are costing $600,” says Rassweilier, “it stands to reason, that same iPhone could cost, perhaps, $2,000 at retail.” That's right. $2,000 for an iPhone.
It is already about $1600 for an iPhone, so what is the difference?
@@starventure difference is Most American adults don’t have enough savings to pay an emergency $1,000 expense
Bankrate's Mark Hamrick tells Fortune that it's "disappointing because it is an indication that so many Americans are living paycheck to paycheck."
@@cherubimcherubim9515 How on earth are they buying iPhones then?
@@starventure because iPhone is mostly made in China. Most and the latest iPhones are mostly made in China, but rely on components from all over the world. Apple has also shifted the assembly of older iPhone models to other Asian countries, namely India and Vietnam. Is the iPhone made in the USA? No, the iPhone is assembled in China, Vietnam, and India.
@@starventure just like your Boeing planes and everything else is largely made in China. More than 10,000 Boeing airplanes currently fly throughout the world with parts and assemblies built in China. Boeing Tianjin Composites Co. Ltd, located in Tianjin, is a joint venture with the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC).
It is way more complicated, eg, DE refinery takes heavy sour crude. Several years ago, Russkies were rumored to secretly financed anti fracking environmental groups to kill Pennsylvania east coast competition. Reason : At one time Delaware bought lots Russky oil, anti fracking protests back fired and helped buy miles of Canadian oil trains. Also, power plants switched to natural gas from PA. DE & NJ refines a very difficult high polluting high sulfur oil. The sulfur as H2S is recovered by Veolia (ex DuPont business) for high value sulfur based acids. In short, oil is refined in the locations best suited to the refinery.
Reading between the lines, I'm thinking the oil compan ies wouldn't make as much profit if they just sold and refined and drilled the oil here. There's a lot of information here, but I still think it boils down to greed for the big oil companies
Reminder california uses a special gasoline blend
which uses additives that everyone else can use.
We don't use oil from other parts of the country, other than Alaska, is that it's difficult to transport here. We have no pipeline , but there was movement to build one. During Trump's presidency, we were shipping oil to California through rail but we have the sierra nevada, which made it very dangerous. Imagine East Palestine, with alot more flammables. although , in that case < i would want it burned.
@slewone4905 exactly it's more complex than the refineries can't take that type of crude. Not taking into account that the refined oil requires additives at what point is it better to refine then take profit then buy refined and add in the additives. It not always better to use what you produce
9:27 is when he actually answers the main question of the video. A lot of fluff in this video.
At 5:58 "interest rates hit all time lows" Quick fact check, that statement is not correct. 10 year US treasuries in 2008 for the first 10 months were ~4.0%. Yes there was a sharp drop off but that lasted 9 months and were at 3.79% on 6.19.09. Why is this important, the petroleum industry is capital intensive and to do an NPV calc, the discount rate is a KEY driver of the calc. To use a DR based on the 10 year with a temporarily very low rate would get the analyst fired.
The fed cut the interest rate in December 2008 to .25%
That's probably what he's talking about.
My brother is an operator in Ponca city Oklahoma his unit refines American oil all the time. Bakkan oil after the turnaround they went from 80k to 95k barrels a day. In that unit. A need to update your information would help your information.
I remember the gas shortages of the 70’s and the bumper stickers “Burn Jews not Oil”. Hope we do not go back to those days!!
Overall Great Video! I was unaware about how we were unable to process our own oil…
The EPA has made it impossible to build new refinery facilities or upgrade existing facilities.
@@Matt-yg8ub It could certainly be done, but it's just not cost/effective.
@@go4ride could be done…. If the EPA wasn’t standing in the way.
@@Matt-yg8ub If the law and the desire for clean air weren't standing in the way.
@@go4ride If unnecessarily restrictive laws masquerading as a desire for clean air weren’t standing in the way.
Plenty of oil off Florida coast time to drill that first! See how you like those oil spills like everyone out west has to put up with!
Well I think you pointed out the production problem and the processing issues very well however you said it when you mentioned the EPA.The EPA envisioned as a force for good environmental protection in manufacturing has effectively driven out or destroyed a lot of industries in the USA.American companies don’t mind refining in other places and wasting more energy to ship it back and forth across the waters of the planet.I think polluting the rest of the World just to maintain a standard of living here in the USA is risky.The efficiency of a country is in its ability to manufacture the goods and services it needs.Pharmaceuticals,textiles,”food”and yes energy must be brought back here to the USA.The EPA is not a law making body and should not be in charge of policy.I think we need to find better refining solutions and lower the costs to building new top of the line refineries here in the USA.
💯 agree
@franksullivan1873
That is the real problem with American businesses. Every business tries to minimise costs & maximise profits, but that shifts some cost to other (unsuspecting) industries. Overall, what the businesses save, the country loses. There must be a financially efficient & holistic national policy (humongous work for the administration, but not too difficult in this age of AI).
@@MrPoornakumarI agree and the greatest threat to life on this planet is the problem of plastics not being reused or recycled.There must be a worldwide solution by all nations.Plastic production is the real need of oil production.Yes the oil is needed to make practically everything that our modern world uses.Oil is going to continue to be a need of manufacturing for a long time….unfortunately.
@@franksullivan1873
I agree with you, that recycling is the need of the hour & must be done. For the last three, four decades every person is adding so much of daily wastage. Biggest problem now is management of this "waste" with an auxiliary limb of recycling. Plastic is most amenable for recycling.
Your mention of oil comes next.
EPA has always been driven by ideology, not science. It is a failed experiment.
1:17 The United States oil consumption is in blue, which is the same color as the chart background.
Do to the problems that are coming to sea transport Local refinery's are going to retool from Sour to Sweet
we can be totally self sufficent
Not an expert on these but the presentation was excellent.
So it's cheaper to ship oil from anywhere else in the world than it is to move it across our own country.?
Nothing in America makes any sense anymore
And the next new Paradigm (for your next video Nathan) is USA going Green but only so that it has more Oil to Export. This is one of the reasons why, surprisingly, Texas is a leader in building Wind and Solar Farms.
Yes they are following the cynical COP28 plan where countries use Oil Profits to reduce their own countries Carbon Footprint (like with vast Solar Farms in Saudi, etc) whilst making more Oil available to sell to poorer countries abroad. So Gulf States are opening up more markets in Asia and Africa whilst Texas and New Mexico are concentrating on Latin America.
I remember back in the early 2000s, I would drive out to visit my dad in West Texas, and I had to go through the Roscoe Wind Farm. Knowing what the area had looked like just ten years earlier, it was very surreal seeing wind turbines as far as the eye could see (at that time it was the largest wind farm on earth). Especially at night when each turbine was topped with a red warning light, it was easy to imagine an invasion of alien war machines. 😁
Not surprising at all. Energy is energy. Unfortunately, Texas is also removing cropland and installing solar farms, because the land is already flat, that's where they buy up the land for those. I've nothing against solar, but I'd rather they cleared scrubland and left the farms alone. San Angelo, Texas had 2 large solar farms that used to be cotton and sorghum fields.
Why@@durgan5668in fr FC CF Dr Uni