If you're interested in how the oil industry as a whole operates and why, Oil 101 is an interesting read.
Highly recommend
How an oil refinery works
41–50 of 209 posts
Re: How an oil refinery works
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well-meaning legislation (eg CEQA in CA) is effectively weaponized by NIMBYs who have outsized power to add years if not a decade or more to something getting built. There is also an overly naive, even performative opposition to anything fossil fuel related without having a substitute (again, I say this as a particularly pro-solar person). This adds significantly to costs. I'm also anti-nuclear because it's too expen…
> the new refineries in Oklahoma and Texas. Two truly new refineries in 50 years despite lots of growth of demand throughout most of those decades. The fact there's only been two in fifty years and neither is anywhere near operational is proving my point. These are largely aberrations compared to the last fifty years , and its extremely notable the larger one is being built largely by a foreign oil company wanting to…
You ignore all the upgrades existing refineries have had. They pollute much less these days than when built. In 10 years your new refinery will also be old and not up to modern standards. It too will need upgrades.
Re: How an oil refinery works
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
"It's impossible to get permission to build something with specifications that is financially viable." There, better? These agencies have all sorts of discretion to waive this or enforce that or interpret some third thing and yet they leverage all of it in a manner that stalls progress. I know a guy who has a textbook perfect situation for a septic in MN. MN won't permit it not because of some law or rule or code, bu…
You mean to tell me the land of 10,000 lakes might have a shallow water table that might require mounds more often to prevent people poisoning groundwater with their literal shit? The horror. Without hard data about the site I'm probably going to side with the county on that one. As for your friend wanting to improve the lot but needs to do a lot of drainage fixes, he should lobby his community for property tax abate…
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Re: How an oil refinery works
#44My father actually works at the Jamnagar refinery. I was bought up in there seeing and visiting the refinery as families are allowed for some trips every now and then. I learnt a lot of this process of refining out of curiosity of what my father did and it was just so cool. The refinery in context is the world's largest since more than a decade and seeing it with your own eyes, it feels like a wonder of the world for real. Truly marvellous outcome of perseverance and engineering. Loved to see this blog on the HN homepage, its very well written
Re: How an oil refinery works
#45The article is quick to point out the huge role of oil in the modern energy mix. It also fails to note that most of the energy ends up us waste heat. The so called "Primary energy fallacy". Other than that, it's a great read.
> It also fails to note that most of the energy ends up us waste heat. I've heard the statistic that 40% of the total oil pumped out of the ground just to transporting oil. We use almost half just to move it to and fro before even using it. Is this accurate?
This doesn't math out to me just based on what I know of energy consumption numbers.
Re: How an oil refinery works
#46The article is quick to point out the huge role of oil in the modern energy mix. It also fails to note that most of the energy ends up us waste heat. The so called "Primary energy fallacy". Other than that, it's a great read.
> It also fails to note that most of the energy ends up us waste heat. I've heard the statistic that 40% of the total oil pumped out of the ground just to transporting oil. We use almost half just to move it to and fro before even using it. Is this accurate?
Sounds really dubious to me. Tankers and pipelines are really efficient.
I would not believe it at all without source.
Maybe someone got confused by "transportation" altogether being major consumer?
Re: How an oil refinery works
#47The article is quick to point out the huge role of oil in the modern energy mix. It also fails to note that most of the energy ends up us waste heat. The so called "Primary energy fallacy". Other than that, it's a great read.
> It also fails to note that most of the energy ends up us waste heat. I've heard the statistic that 40% of the total oil pumped out of the ground just to transporting oil. We use almost half just to move it to and fro before even using it. Is this accurate?
I suspect this is confusion between the statistic that 40% of global shipping traffic is transportation of fossil fuels.
https://qz.com/2113243/forty-percent-of-all-shipping-cargo-c...
Re: How an oil refinery works
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It also fails to note that most of the energy ends up us waste heat. I've heard the statistic that 40% of the total oil pumped out of the ground just to transporting oil. We use almost half just to move it to and fro before even using it. Is this accurate?
It must be way higher if you really got into it i.e. A friend that works on rigs is flown to and from rigs from anywhere on earth every month, then choppers out to the rig and back. Same for everyone that works on the rigs.
And? Given how much typical oil rig produces this would not be a serious part of its production.
Re: How an oil refinery works
#49The article is quick to point out the huge role of oil in the modern energy mix. It also fails to note that most of the energy ends up us waste heat. The so called "Primary energy fallacy". Other than that, it's a great read.
> It also fails to note that most of the energy ends up us waste heat. I've heard the statistic that 40% of the total oil pumped out of the ground just to transporting oil. We use almost half just to move it to and fro before even using it. Is this accurate?
This can't be accurate.
Let's say a barrel of oil travels 15,000 km from Saudi Arabia to Texas, gets refined, gets shipped another 10,000 km to Europe, then the last 1,000 km overland by truck.
This reasonably well sourced Reddit post [0] says big oil tankers burn 0.1% of their fuel per 1,000 km, smaller ones a bit more. Say 0.2% on aggregate, that's 5% for the whole journey, 10% because the ship is empty half the time.
From the same source, a truck burns about 3% per 1,000 km. This seems too high: for a 40,000 kg loaded truck that's less than 1 kmpl or 2.5 mpg. But let's believe it, double it for empty journeys, and we still only get 16%.
I used very conservative estimates here: surely most oil doesn't travel anywhere near that far.
Alternative thought experiment: look at the traffic on the highway. If this were true, even neglecting oil burnt for heating or electricity or aviation, you'd expect 40% of the vehicles to be tanker trucks.
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2jozd7/e...
Re: How an oil refinery works
#50My father actually works at the Jamnagar refinery. I was bought up in there seeing and visiting the refinery as families are allowed for some trips every now and then. I learnt a lot of this process of refining out of curiosity of what my father did and it was just so cool. The refinery in context is the world's largest since more than a decade and seeing it with your own eyes, it feels like a wonder of the world for…
Would love to hear stories about it. Reliance is working on replicating the Jamnagar refinery approach in America [0] now as well.
It's interesting to both see Asian majors and EPCs increasingly dominating the petrochemical chain as well as see an industry that the US used to lead in increasingly become dependent those partners.
What a massive shift in just 25 years.
[0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-11/reliance-...