The Navy and Marines going green?

[deepwater]

something you need to know about refineries. the majority of them are 'tuned' to refine crude from one specific source, and to change crudes you would have to change the processes. not all crude oil is the same. it's different weights, viscosity, flash point, etc... so to start using crude from a new well, you must either build a new refinery, or stop producing from another source and reconfigure your existing plant to take the new product. you can't really take from any source the way a gas station can with the finished product. if we are not allowed to build new ones, then we must wait for old wells to run dry, or continue to use foreign oil.

deepwater

[fightingquaker13]

That I did not know. Thanks for the info. Sadly, it seems that things are a lot more expensive than they seemed, given the cost of a new refinery. Add in different settings? Yikes!
FQ13

[Timothy]

something you need to know about refineries. the majority of them are 'tuned' to refine crude from one specific source, and to change crudes you would have to change the processes. not all crude oil is the same. it's different weights, viscosity, flash point, etc... so to start using crude from a new well, you must either build a new refinery, or stop producing from another source and reconfigure your existing plant to take the new product. you can't really take from any source the way a gas station can with the finished product. if we are not allowed to build new ones, then we must wait for old wells to run dry, or continue to use foreign oil.

deepwater

Isn't this why we don't refine the oil coming in through the Alaska pipeline?  We need light, sweet crude or some such thing because of our EPA standards...

[deepwater]

Isn't this why we don't refine the oil coming in through the Alaska pipeline?  We need light, sweet crude or some such thing because of our EPA standards...

we can still refine it. you would be amazed at how much product you can get from one barrel of crude. 1 barrel is 42 gallons. after processing they usually get 43, 44, 45 gallons, depending on what they started with and what they are making. one of the bi-products is processed cheese. (yuk). none of the crude goes to waste.. even the pet coke is used by the coal firing power plants to boost BTUs and fuel efficiency.
they can process out everything from heavy fuel oil to 3in1 oil. the tuning only refers to the crude going in and what needs to be done to maximize production.