I have a problem reconciling your figures with US statistical ones. You state that diesel is the main usage in the US versus gasoline. But Gasoline usage in the US is three times more than diesel as per https://www.statista.com/statistics/189410/us-gasoline-and-diesel-consumption-for-highway-vehicles-since-1992/srsltid=AfmBOooclEAJB5GZN_GiEvRoR0YD93mTmykE6aPtK4DThTTBv5pfFn9h. I always was under the impression that for years the US was exporting gasoline to Europe which was exporting to the US its excess diesel, because of the different structure of their respective refining, which in Europe is biased much more towards refining heavy crudes, and in the US towards lighter ones. I do not think that this situation has substantially changed.
To process heavy crude, the standard two distillation process used for light crudes is not enough, as the percentage of fuel oil sludge after the second distillation is too high. A third one is needed using a cocker, which processes this heavy sludge coming from the second distillation into some gasoline and into mostly diesel with some bunker used by ships. In 1983, a cocker costed already $1 billion a piece for a throughput of about 100.000 barrel per day. This is a very expensive piece of equipment which most US refiners do not have. One of them, CITGO, owned later by PDVSA, the Venezuelan state owned oil company, had and still has one. It came from Champlin, then owned by Union Pacific, which sold it to PDVSA in 1987. I know this for a fact as I was the investment banker who engineered this transaction, acting for Union Pacific. There is a cubic meter of archives at the Library of Congress on this landmark transaction. It changed the geopolitics of both the US and Venezuela and work perfectly for both parties for years. Unfortunately, this perfect match was sabotaged by the Chaves/Maduro gang, through extensive mismanagement of PDVSA, which was then a first class company, operated by a first class management. CITGO was taken over very recently (2021 for 2022?) by a US distress fund, run by I think M. Singer, who received it as a US court-ordered payment for unpaid sovereign Venezuelan debt Singer owned, and who then discovered that a refinery with a cocker cannot run economically without very heavy sour crudes which sell at a deep discount to light crudes, to justify the additionnel cost of the cocker. The bulk of CITGO current processing capacity, which bought two other refineries after Champlin, is 700.000 barrels per day, most of it being heavy crudes. This represents most of the swing back of 500.000 barrels per day you mention, to normal exports from Venezuela to the US after the normalisation of economic relationship between the US and Venezuela following the Maduro kidnapping. I trust this is helpful.
Yesterday Iana Zaikina won the Gold, so they played the Russian national anthem, while the Ukrainian girl, silver medalist, covered her face.
https://t.me/olympic_russia/23514
At the rate things are going on the battlefield this is not the last of her tears.
Trump is doing what his Jewish handlers told him to do, like a dog on a leash. Funny to see what America has become.
Dear Larry,
I have a problem reconciling your figures with US statistical ones. You state that diesel is the main usage in the US versus gasoline. But Gasoline usage in the US is three times more than diesel as per https://www.statista.com/statistics/189410/us-gasoline-and-diesel-consumption-for-highway-vehicles-since-1992/srsltid=AfmBOooclEAJB5GZN_GiEvRoR0YD93mTmykE6aPtK4DThTTBv5pfFn9h. I always was under the impression that for years the US was exporting gasoline to Europe which was exporting to the US its excess diesel, because of the different structure of their respective refining, which in Europe is biased much more towards refining heavy crudes, and in the US towards lighter ones. I do not think that this situation has substantially changed.
To process heavy crude, the standard two distillation process used for light crudes is not enough, as the percentage of fuel oil sludge after the second distillation is too high. A third one is needed using a cocker, which processes this heavy sludge coming from the second distillation into some gasoline and into mostly diesel with some bunker used by ships. In 1983, a cocker costed already $1 billion a piece for a throughput of about 100.000 barrel per day. This is a very expensive piece of equipment which most US refiners do not have. One of them, CITGO, owned later by PDVSA, the Venezuelan state owned oil company, had and still has one. It came from Champlin, then owned by Union Pacific, which sold it to PDVSA in 1987. I know this for a fact as I was the investment banker who engineered this transaction, acting for Union Pacific. There is a cubic meter of archives at the Library of Congress on this landmark transaction. It changed the geopolitics of both the US and Venezuela and work perfectly for both parties for years. Unfortunately, this perfect match was sabotaged by the Chaves/Maduro gang, through extensive mismanagement of PDVSA, which was then a first class company, operated by a first class management. CITGO was taken over very recently (2021 for 2022?) by a US distress fund, run by I think M. Singer, who received it as a US court-ordered payment for unpaid sovereign Venezuelan debt Singer owned, and who then discovered that a refinery with a cocker cannot run economically without very heavy sour crudes which sell at a deep discount to light crudes, to justify the additionnel cost of the cocker. The bulk of CITGO current processing capacity, which bought two other refineries after Champlin, is 700.000 barrels per day, most of it being heavy crudes. This represents most of the swing back of 500.000 barrels per day you mention, to normal exports from Venezuela to the US after the normalisation of economic relationship between the US and Venezuela following the Maduro kidnapping. I trust this is helpful.