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The US is a net exporter of petroleum (crude oil plus refined products) but from what Google tells me it is still a net importer of crude oil. It also tells me
by tzs 8mo ago
The US is a net exporter of petroleum (crude oil plus refined products) but from what Google tells me it is still a net importer of crude oil. It also tells me 75% of what goes through Hormuz is crude.
Also, domestic crude of mostly light, sweet crude whereas many US refineries are designed to deal with heavy, sour crude. Google is telling me 80% of the crude that goes through Hormuz is heavy, sour crude.
Does any of this raise the impact disruptions of Hormuz would have on the US?
- Qwertious 8mo ago>Also, domestic crude of mostly light, sweet crude whereas many US refineries are designed to deal with heavy, sour crude. Google is telling me 80% of the crude that goes through Hormuz is heavy, sour crude. The US has some of the best chemists in the world; light sweet crude is easy to refine but heavy sour crude is hard, so US refineries refining light sweet would be a waste of their talents - better to export it out for newbies to refine and buy the harder-to-refine and therefore cheaper heavy sour crude. But if heavy sour becomes more expensive, then the US will switch to the easymode option in a heartbeat. An increased cost of inputs will always hurt the entire industry, but it won't particularly hurt the US any more than anyone else, and will probably hurt them the least - especially when they have plenty of domestic shale oil that will be financially viable to extract if prices go up.
- nerdsniper 8mo ago> if heavy sour becomes more expensive, then the US will switch to the easymode option in a heartbeat. As someone who used to run those distillation columns, it's way more difficult than that. I haven't seen any facility in the USA re-tool like that in less than 2 years. Usually closer to 5. Not a "heartbeat".