Ward Smith

Should the US government be on the hook for $15 billion?

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7 hours ago, Boat said:

So happy to see Ward and EchoChambers concern about Canada’s oil production Trump the US environment for oil the US doesn’t need. Real patriots. Pollution continues to play its role in the COVID epidemic. A 12 county area with 2 beds left for the unmasked and unvaccinated in Alabama. 

You don't know anything about the oil industry. Why are you even on this site? 

Hint, you cannot make diesel from light tight oil, which is what the fracked wells produce. 

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2 hours ago, Ward Smith said:

You don't know anything about the oil industry. Why are you even on this site? 

Hint, you cannot make diesel from light tight oil, which is what the fracked wells produce. 

Actually, with enough energy applied, you can... of course you would release vastly more pollution doing so rather than just using heavier oil which is abundant throughout the world ... except in the USA

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On 8/11/2021 at 2:46 PM, Bobby P said:

Why did this US administration cancel the KeyStone XL project which would have transported oil from right across the border and several US states meanwhile putting out a statement begging for OPEC+ to release more barrels into the market. So, I guess now it's more economically and "environmentally" friendly to have oil supplied from half way across the world rather than from a geographical neighbor. How does one explain these contradicting statements and decisions? 

Because power hungry zealots do not CARE about REALITY

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3 hours ago, Ward Smith said:

You don't know anything about the oil industry. Why are you even on this site? 

Hint, you cannot make diesel from light tight oil, which is what the fracked wells produce. 

You can’t?  You better tell the refineries by my house they are doing it wrong.

you can make diesel with light tight oil’ just not as much as the market demands at a low price.  
 

the heavy oil on the other hand is super cheap and can (eventually with a complex expensive refinery) be made into diesel.  

this is what made the Keystone XL such an attractive proposition.  The refineries by my house in Houston would get super cheap crude to refine into diesel which so then exported or used for domestic demand as needed.  
 

The light tight oil is run through those same refineries to meet the domestic demand for gasoline (and some of the diesel demand) and the rest is exported at a premium price to places in the world with cheap simple refineries who pau the premium to get an easy to refine crude oil. 
 

Everyone is a winner, if the pipeline is built.

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1 hour ago, footeab@yahoo.com said:

Because power hungry zealots do not CARE about REALITY

On the contrary the do care, but they care about power.  If oil or fuel is at risk of being scarce or expensive that is a lever for exerting power that is available to the people who have it.  If oil or fuel is cheap and abundant there are fewer political opportunities to use those items to control the populous with. 

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14 hours ago, Ecocharger said:

Legality doesn't count? Sad commentary"

Black's Law Dictionary  is neither statutory or case law. "Sad Commentary " is on you lack of knowledge. 

"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt."  A Lincoln.

You have certainly removed all doubt.

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2 hours ago, Eric Gagen said:

On the contrary the do care, but they care about power.  If oil or fuel is at risk of being scarce or expensive that is a lever for exerting power that is available to the people who have it.  If oil or fuel is cheap and abundant there are fewer political opportunities to use those items to control the populous with. 

Power and reality are two different things.  Lust for power makes one believe you can bend reality to YOUR wishes.  Playing make believe they can toy with the world to your utopian or in this case zealotry standards never works.  The world is always bigger and imposes reality upon the tyrants. 

The oil genie has been out of the bottle for 100+ years now.

Now if your point was made regarding Nuclear power, then you would have a point.  Since it is not, you don't. 

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8 hours ago, Eric Gagen said:

You can’t?  You better tell the refineries by my house they are doing it wrong.

you can make diesel with light tight oil’ just not as much as the market demands at a low price.  
 

the heavy oil on the other hand is super cheap and can (eventually with a complex expensive refinery) be made into diesel.  

this is what made the Keystone XL such an attractive proposition.  The refineries by my house in Houston would get super cheap crude to refine into diesel which so then exported or used for domestic demand as needed.  
 

The light tight oil is run through those same refineries to meet the domestic demand for gasoline (and some of the diesel demand) and the rest is exported at a premium price to places in the world with cheap simple refineries who pau the premium to get an easy to refine crude oil. 
 

Everyone is a winner, if the pipeline is built.

Wrong on the facts. You can't make long chain molecules out of short chain molecules in a refinery. You would need a Fischer Tropsch method, which is only used when all other avenues are unavailable, such as WWII Germany and South Africa sanctions. Those refineries by your house have "cracking" towers not "adding" towers. No one starts with pentanes plus and makes centanes and beyond. No. One. We're getting premium for our heavy oil right now, the only reason it's not more in demand is jet fuel is down 70%. 

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(edited)

11 hours ago, footeab@yahoo.com said:

Power and reality are two different things.  Lust for power makes one believe you can bend reality to YOUR wishes.  Playing make believe they can toy with the world to your utopian or in this case zealotry standards never works.  The world is always bigger and imposes reality upon the tyrants. 

The oil genie has been out of the bottle for 100+ years now.

Now if your point was made regarding Nuclear power, then you would have a point.  Since it is not, you don't. 

Just because oil exists doesn’t mean that control over the volume available at any given time is worthless.  Ask OPEC how that works.  Any (all?) governments shape access to oil by way of taxes or subsidies on end use, approval or denial of permits to start operations, subsidies to continue or start operations up, etc.  approving or denying a pipeline permit is merely one of those methods of controlling and shaping access.  Not sure how this is different than nuclear power in any way from this perspective because governments also shape access to it in precisely the same way.  
 

Some countries don’t have the ability or desire to construct any nuclear power plants of their own but plenty of countries don’t have access to any of their own oil fields either. 

Edited by Eric Gagen
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5 hours ago, Ward Smith said:

Wrong on the facts. You can't make long chain molecules out of short chain molecules in a refinery. You would need a Fischer Tropsch method, which is only used when all other avenues are unavailable, such as WWII Germany and South Africa sanctions. Those refineries by your house have "cracking" towers not "adding" towers. No one starts with pentanes plus and makes centanes and beyond. No. One. We're getting premium for our heavy oil right now, the only reason it's not more in demand is jet fuel is down 70%. 

There are long chain molecules in light oil - just not as many as the market demands.  The refineries separate them out for use just like all the shorter ones.  

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4 hours ago, Eric Gagen said:

There are long chain molecules in light oil - just not as many as the market demands.  The refineries separate them out for use just like all the shorter ones.  

If there's a quart of long chain molecules in a bbl of LTO I'll be shocked. 

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3 hours ago, Ward Smith said:

If there's a quart of long chain molecules in a bbl of LTO I'll be shocked. 

Now you have me curious - I’ll see if I can get a distillation assay for some typical LTO crudes.  I’m sure there are some around.  That’s my next post here.  I would guess that if ‘long’ is defined as diesel range my bet is more like 3-6 gallons per bbl but we shall see! 

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30 minutes ago, Eric Gagen said:

Now you have me curious - I’ll see if I can get a distillation assay for some typical LTO crudes.  I’m sure there are some around.  That’s my next post here.  I would guess that if ‘long’ is defined as diesel range my bet is more like 3-6 gallons per bbl but we shall see! 

I've seen proprietary information on LTO that was 60 API. That's barely oil, it's really wet natural gas. 

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21 minutes ago, Ward Smith said:

I've seen proprietary information on LTO that was 60 API. That's barely oil, it's really wet natural gas. 

Most of them aren't nearly that light 60 API is classified as condensate usually it's more like propane.  

 

Most LTO oiil production is more in the 40-45 API range, and I found some data:

https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pnp_pct_dc_nus_pct_m.htm

On average for the whole of the US, just under 30% of all crude gets converted into Diesel - that is a yield of ~ 12.5 gallons of diesel per barrel.

For bakken Crude:

https://inside.mines.edu/~jjechura/Refining/02_Feedstocks_&_Products.pdf

On slide 23, its 25% of diesel yield for a whopping 10.5 gallons/bbl of diesel  That's way more than even I thought

For Eagleford crude its 21%, so over 8.8 gallons/bbl of diesel 

For 'Western Canadian Select' (probably a mix of oil sands and what little declining normal production from Canada exists) he yield is much higher

 https://www.aogr.com/web-exclusives/exclusive-story/catalysts-optimize-tight-oil-refining (this article has info on other grades of 'normal' and LTO oil crudes also) 

From eyeballing the chart about midway down on the article it's 35% diesel, so about 14.7 gallons of Diesel/bb for Canadian oil.  Maya Crude (heavy oil from Mexico) runs about 30% diesel, or 12.6 gallons of diesel/bbl.  Both of these crudes have large heavier fractions which can be broken down to Diesel if desired in catalytic crackers, and I am sure that' the big 'prize' for refineries set up to use this stuff as feedstock.

I couldn't find an exact breakdown for WTL (West Texas Light) which is an average of LTO from the Permian, but it looks like on average it's between the Eagleford and Bakken numbers.

 

So we were both wrong.  The average diesel yield from LTO is MUCH higher than either of us were estimating, yet still lower than market demand.   

 

 

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21 hours ago, nsdp said:

Black's Law Dictionary  is neither statutory or case law. "Sad Commentary " is on you lack of knowledge. 

"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt."  A Lincoln.

You have certainly removed all doubt.

You removed any doubt I had about your posts long ago.

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On 8/22/2021 at 12:23 PM, Eric Gagen said:

Most of them aren't nearly that light 60 API is classified as condensate usually it's more like propane.  

 

Most LTO oiil production is more in the 40-45 API range, and I found some data:

https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pnp_pct_dc_nus_pct_m.htm

On average for the whole of the US, just under 30% of all crude gets converted into Diesel - that is a yield of ~ 12.5 gallons of diesel per barrel.

For bakken Crude:

https://inside.mines.edu/~jjechura/Refining/02_Feedstocks_&_Products.pdf

On slide 23, its 25% of diesel yield for a whopping 10.5 gallons/bbl of diesel  That's way more than even I thought

For Eagleford crude its 21%, so over 8.8 gallons/bbl of diesel 

For 'Western Canadian Select' (probably a mix of oil sands and what little declining normal production from Canada exists) he yield is much higher

 https://www.aogr.com/web-exclusives/exclusive-story/catalysts-optimize-tight-oil-refining (this article has info on other grades of 'normal' and LTO oil crudes also) 

From eyeballing the chart about midway down on the article it's 35% diesel, so about 14.7 gallons of Diesel/bb for Canadian oil.  Maya Crude (heavy oil from Mexico) runs about 30% diesel, or 12.6 gallons of diesel/bbl.  Both of these crudes have large heavier fractions which can be broken down to Diesel if desired in catalytic crackers, and I am sure that' the big 'prize' for refineries set up to use this stuff as feedstock.

I couldn't find an exact breakdown for WTL (West Texas Light) which is an average of LTO from the Permian, but it looks like on average it's between the Eagleford and Bakken numbers.

 

So we were both wrong.  The average diesel yield from LTO is MUCH higher than either of us were estimating, yet still lower than market demand.   

 

 

I'm looking thru that school of mines PDF but am not convinced

There are tons of articles like This one that say what I believe, which is that they need to blend to produce the longer chain molecules like diesel. The refinery we're working with (unfortunately under NDA) is starving for heavy oil. They don't have delayed cokers but use blends. Speaking of blends that's kind of what Western Canada Select is. A blend of super heavy bitumen 8-12 API with pentanes or other condensates as the diluent to bring the average API to about 21. They're not getting more diesel out because they almost universally remove the diluent first, then delayed coke the bitumen, producing something akin to normal crude. It would actually be much better to blend that super heavy with super light and skip the delayed coker step. Unfortunately Xiden cancelled the pipeline that was designed to do that, mixing Canadian bitumen with North Dakota very light oil. 

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Ward doesn't understand chemistry.

Several portions of light oil can be converted to heavier fractions.  It is not generally done because it is not economical.

Simple:

Dehydrate a short chain alkane to get an alkene and hydrogen.  Polymerize the alkene to get relatively low MW plastic.  Crack the new polymer to get a heavier fraction than what you started with.

 

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Well brain dead Biden says “The Buck Stops with Him” being he fucked up the United States this fast unfortunately that Buck is not worth 100 cents so the government on a 15 Billion debt really only owes .68 cents per Buck……..Fuck Biden and Fuck DemocRats….

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1 hour ago, Ward Smith said:

I'm looking thru that school of mines PDF but am not convinced

There are tons of articles like This one that say what I believe, which is that they need to blend to produce the longer chain molecules like diesel. The refinery we're working with (unfortunately under NDA) is starving for heavy oil. They don't have delayed cokers but use blends. Speaking of blends that's kind of what Western Canada Select is. A blend of super heavy bitumen 8-12 API with pentanes or other condensates as the diluent to bring the average API to about 21. They're not getting more diesel out because they almost universally remove the diluent first, then delayed coke the bitumen, producing something akin to normal crude. It would actually be much better to blend that super heavy with super light and skip the delayed coker step. Unfortunately Xiden cancelled the pipeline that was designed to do that, mixing Canadian bitumen with North Dakota very light oil. 

Mixing super heavy with super light means that you don't get any of the inbetween stuff (like diesel and jet fuel) at all.

The NBC article you linked is correct, but it's not technically very precise. 

For a very simple analysis of the problem, lets say you have a refinery set up to process 100,000 bbls a day of midgrade crude in the 25-30 API range.  After a couple of simple preconditioning steps, your refinery is split into 3 main units a light, medium and heavy:  One takes the 25,000 bbls a day of light stuff and processes it into propane and gasoline, and a few other light products.  One takes 50,000 bbls a day of the midrange stuff and makes it into diesel, jet fuel and mid range lubricants.  The other takes 25,000 bbls a day of heavy stuff and converts it into fuel oil for ships, heavy lubricants and asphalt.  Life is good.

Now you start getting in a bunch of 45 API oil.  You run it through your prep stages, and you wind up with 60,000 bbls for the light unit, 30,000 bbls a day for the medium unit, and 10,000 bbls a day for the heavy  unit.  

So you have a giant problem.  Your light unit can ONLY process 25,000 bbls a day - you can't use 60,000.  This means that you cannot under any circumstances take 100,000 bbls of 45 API oil in, becuase you would wind up with 35,000 bbls of oil each day that you have to throw away.  Your only option is to take only what you actually can process, and that is 41,000 bbls a day.  You can take  that and after splitting your light unit is at 100% capacity of 25,000 bbls a day.  but your medium unit is only running 12,000 bbls a day out of it's 50,000 bbls a day capacity and your heavy unit is only running 4,000 bbls a day.  

You have less than half as much stuff left to sell at the end of the day, and you still have to run ALL of the equipment in the whole refinery to use it, which means your labor costs, parts costs, energy costs, etc. did not fall by half.  Also your regular customers are highly pissed off because you cannot meet their demand for your normal products 

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On 8/23/2021 at 6:05 PM, Eric Gagen said:

Mixing super heavy with super light means that you don't get any of the inbetween stuff (like diesel and jet fuel) at all.

The NBC article you linked is correct, but it's not technically very precise. 

For a very simple analysis of the problem, lets say you have a refinery set up to process 100,000 bbls a day of midgrade crude in the 25-30 API range.  After a couple of simple preconditioning steps, your refinery is split into 3 main units a light, medium and heavy:  One takes the 25,000 bbls a day of light stuff and processes it into propane and gasoline, and a few other light products.  One takes 50,000 bbls a day of the midrange stuff and makes it into diesel, jet fuel and mid range lubricants.  The other takes 25,000 bbls a day of heavy stuff and converts it into fuel oil for ships, heavy lubricants and asphalt.  Life is good.

Now you start getting in a bunch of 45 API oil.  You run it through your prep stages, and you wind up with 60,000 bbls for the light unit, 30,000 bbls a day for the medium unit, and 10,000 bbls a day for the heavy  unit.  

So you have a giant problem.  Your light unit can ONLY process 25,000 bbls a day - you can't use 60,000.  This means that you cannot under any circumstances take 100,000 bbls of 45 API oil in, becuase you would wind up with 35,000 bbls of oil each day that you have to throw away.  Your only option is to take only what you actually can process, and that is 41,000 bbls a day.  You can take  that and after splitting your light unit is at 100% capacity of 25,000 bbls a day.  but your medium unit is only running 12,000 bbls a day out of it's 50,000 bbls a day capacity and your heavy unit is only running 4,000 bbls a day.  

You have less than half as much stuff left to sell at the end of the day, and you still h#6 oil ave to run ALL of the equipment in the whole refinery to use it, which means your labor costs, parts costs, energy costs, etc. did not fall by half.  Also your regular customers are highly pissed off because you cannot meet their demand for your normal products 

Good to see you guys are learning basic refinery gain issues.  When you change the mix heavy vs light crude by even a very small amount , it changes volumes that can be processed.  A refinery balances on btu's in vs btus out. not barrels IN VS barrels/OUT.  Even a very small change in the difference between #2 oil (diesel) and Bunker C #6 is between 5.8 mmbtu/barrel and 6.24 mmbtu/barrel.  That is about a 10% gain in the number of barrels for #2(requires new EPA permits) after you deduct fuel for operations.  That is WHY no one on the gulf coast except Llyondell is jumping up and down about XL being canceled. It is also why Valero chose in 2013 to buy  heated tank cars after running the cost by rail vs refinery upgrade.  Safer and  AND NO NEW EPA PERMITS Https://www.mysanantonio.com/business/article/Moving-crude-by-rail-works-for-refiners-4547720.php Note this decision was made in 2013. It saves re configuring refinery runs which can cost from $100 million plus down time to 500 million. 650,000b/d became available excess for export  ONLY AT NEDERLAND once EXXON/Shell-ARAMCO committed to the 350,000 b/d upgrade at Motiva and PEMEX bought 250,000bd off Shell at Deer Park.

KXL would have needed another C$ 1billion  Provincial bailout to start operating because they only have one contracting shipper . That is Llyondell. only one port,Nederland. Houston is already 100% with crude imports and refined product exports. Beaumont 's slots are taken by LNG.

Edited by nsdp
typos

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By the way 42 gallons of # 6 is equal to 50 gallons of octane.

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