After reading another article about Venezuela and the oil Trump wants, I wondered what kind it was – the high-yield, light, sweet, crude like the middle east has, or the thick, hard-to-process, crude. It's the latter: Venezuelan oil is heavy & thick, requiring lots of effort to process.
The shale oil already collected in the US apparently is easier to process.
Politics aside (if that's possible), is the volume and quality of crude worthwhile processing, or are we better off sticking with our own oil?
Posted by Eagle-737
2 Comments
From what I understand, US refineries have been developed over decades to refine heavy sour crude oil from the middle east etc., so it is more economical for us to sell our valuable sweet light crude oil to other countries which have the refining capacity. The infrastructure investment in these refineries means the US adds greater value to the lower quality heavy sour crude by refining it. Refining the sweet crude is relatively easier, so there is less value added by the refiner.
You should look at why the US imports so much heavy oil from Canada. The gulf coast refineries all are set up for heavy oil. And that is because we used to import a lot of it from Venezuela. 40% of domestically produced crude isn’t refined in the US, we export it. We have plenty of refining capacity set up to refine Venezuelan oil. We already do not “stick to our own” oil.