Trump issues new permit for Keystone XL oil pipeline

[John Foote + 1,135]

Would you want a big oil company owning the pipeline? Remember history and Standard Oil when someone can lock up distribution? It's not good.

There are no Teddy Roosevelts in power today who would stop things from running roughshod.  

[ceo_energemsier + 1,818]

4 hours ago, Ward Smith said:

When I was at the CCQTA meeting I sat next to a fine gentleman from Irving Oil. They have a massive refinery on the East Coast of Canada and import virtually 90% of the crude they process. They don't have delayed cokers or hydrogenators so have basically zero ability to deal with the bitumen produced in Alberta and Saskatchewan. That was part of the reason the Canada East pipeline was stupid from the beginning. 

I think the community here would be surprised to learn that 100% of the world supply of elemental sulfur comes from refineries. They used to mine it, but no mine can compete with refinery methods, and remember we're talking 0.05-3% sulfur by mass in crude. That sulfur is used in everything from matches to fertilizer and is invaluable in electronics as sulfur hexaflouride, an insulating gas. If you've ever driven by a refinery and smelled rotten eggs, that's a poorly operated refinery. The sulfur has value and if you can smell it, they're letting valuable product escape. 

Foreign refineries love American crude because it's cheaper and sweeter than the alternatives. They only recently were permitted to purchase ours so they're still futzing with it. I believe the Korean complaints about contaminants were nothing more than bargaining chips. The contamination was likely in the parts per million or billion range, and unless it poisons their catalysts (unlikely) it is essentially meaningless. 

You can go to any major refining hub and see mountains of sulphur piled up from refining operations. You will also find mountains of petcoke . The air quality/health issues from massive amounts of petcoke stored in southern Chicago caused the city to issue a petcoke ban.

I said the same thing about the US shale crudes being of higher API gravity , lower sulphur content and easier to refine and to blend with heavier crude oils /tar sands oil  and therefore are in higher demand. From a sale purchase contractual point of view, the quality of the crude oil is tested and analyzed before the vessel departs the port of loading and samples sealed and secured by the vessel Master are also kept. on board . There is also immediate testing done after discharging the crude oil cargo from vessel @ the discharge port. So it is not a "crap shoot" when it comes to the quality of the oil being purchased by a buyer. The contract defines the type of crude oil and its complete crude analysis  and if there is deviation in API gravity/sulphur and other parameters , the price is adjusted , unless otherwise total unacceptable. Refiners wont buy crude oil if it has certain chemicals added at the well head, in storage tanks, tank batteries , additives, inhibitors etc because it will cause damage to the catalysts and other equipment @ the refinery, not to mention other technical and non technical problems. Also sometimes (in the US and elsewhere), contamination may occur when a producer/operator uses some chemicals in treating wells, flow lines and lease tankage to remove paraffin buildup. A small volume of crude contaminated with oxygenated or halogenated compounds can leave large volumes of crude almost worthless. Refiners will hold the sell liable for any damage to the refinery from such contaminated oil. In light of the contractual terms on quality of the crude oil, the buyers would long before the vessel discharges the oil about any crude oil quality issues and then definitely after discharge. Contamination could happen onboard a vessel, from previous cargoes transported, crude oil shipment can be comingled with another cargo of crude oil. Crude oil tankers are called dirty tankers for a reason , they carry all types of crude oils and over time can have the residue of dozens if not hundreds of oil cargoes which can lead to a new batch of oil loaded on board being contaminated with any number of chemicals. In the US all the pipelines that move crude oil, move them in batches for a specific shipper on specific shipping cycles , it can also get contaminated and or mixed with other crude oils . In the shipment of refined products via pipelines, a product mix called transmix occurs , which is usually a mix of gasoline and diesel / jet fuel and is sold off by the pipeline companies to  processing plants to distill and  to separate the products. These distillation products are further treated to form saleable gasoline and diesel.

[Boat + 1,323]

So why do we need this oil anyway? It's certainly not for US consumption. Why does the US need the millions of barrels imported, refined and rexported to other countries.  Do we really need the foreign owned refineries who represent 30% of US refining capacity. 

For the oil producers in the US how does another pipeline from Canada do anything but drive prices lower.

Many of you complain about the overproduction in the Permain but love the idea of adding oil to the market from a foreign country and dump it in the Gulf. Weird unless your anti-American.

[Boat + 1,323]

Yea I live near Houston. We just went through another oil related fire that sent a plume of toxic smoke over Houston. 

Edited April 5, 2019 by Boat

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

44 minutes ago, ceo_energemsier said:

You can go to any major refining hub and see mountains of sulphur piled up from refining operations. You will also find mountains of petcoke . The air quality/health issues from massive amounts of petcoke stored in southern Chicago caused the city to issue a petcoke ban.

I said the same thing about the US shale crudes being of higher API gravity , lower sulphur content and easier to refine and to blend with heavier crude oils /tar sands oil  and therefore are in higher demand. From a sale purchase contractual point of view, the quality of the crude oil is tested and analyzed before the vessel departs the port of loading and samples sealed and secured by the vessel Master are also kept. on board . There is also immediate testing done after discharging the crude oil cargo from vessel @ the discharge port. So it is not a "crap shoot" when it comes to the quality of the oil being purchased by a buyer. The contract defines the type of crude oil and its complete crude analysis  and if there is deviation in API gravity/sulphur and other parameters , the price is adjusted , unless otherwise total unacceptable. Refiners wont buy crude oil if it has certain chemicals added at the well head, in storage tanks, tank batteries , additives, inhibitors etc because it will cause damage to the catalysts and other equipment @ the refinery, not to mention other technical and non technical problems. Also sometimes (in the US and elsewhere), contamination may occur when a producer/operator uses some chemicals in treating wells, flow lines and lease tankage to remove paraffin buildup. A small volume of crude contaminated with oxygenated or halogenated compounds can leave large volumes of crude almost worthless. Refiners will hold the sell liable for any damage to the refinery from such contaminated oil. In light of the contractual terms on quality of the crude oil, the buyers would long before the vessel discharges the oil about any crude oil quality issues and then definitely after discharge. Contamination could happen onboard a vessel, from previous cargoes transported, crude oil shipment can be comingled with another cargo of crude oil. Crude oil tankers are called dirty tankers for a reason , they carry all types of crude oils and over time can have the residue of dozens if not hundreds of oil cargoes which can lead to a new batch of oil loaded on board being contaminated with any number of chemicals. In the US all the pipelines that move crude oil, move them in batches for a specific shipper on specific shipping cycles , it can also get contaminated and or mixed with other crude oils . In the shipment of refined products via pipelines, a product mix called transmix occurs , which is usually a mix of gasoline and diesel / jet fuel and is sold off by the pipeline companies to  processing plants to distill and  to separate the products. These distillation products are further treated to form saleable gasoline and diesel.

Yup to all the above. Thank you for an excellent synopsis. I may have overstated the Korean refinery intentions, my thinking was shaded by the fact someone else immediately took the shipment. Apparently they weren't as picky. My friends in midstream call those batches "slugs", I'm not sure why. They also described running "slugs" of diesel or other solvent like batches in between crudes so the old crude isn't contaminating the new. I know that in the Bakken some producers who have the misfortune to produce sour can't use the pipelines at all anymore, because too much capacity was lost due to the intervening "cleanup slugs" needed.

Petcoke is a different issue. They used to sell every pound of it to coal powered electrical plants, but the Obama EPA made that virtually impossible. Unfortunately your utility no longer gets to buy Petcoke for less than half the cost of bituminous coal and pass the savings onto you. 

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

14 minutes ago, Boat said:

So why do we need this oil anyway? It's certainly not for US consumption. Why does the US need the millions of barrels imported, refined and rexported to other countries.  Do we really need the foreign owned refineries who represent 30% of US refining capacity. 

For the oil producers in the US how does another pipeline from Canada do anything but drive prices lower.

Many of you complain about the overproduction in the Permain but love the idea of adding oil to the market from a foreign country and dump it in the Gulf. Weird unless your anti-American.

Here's the problem boat. Refineries are great at splitting long chain molecules but they can't add them together. The light sweet crude is fine for making gasoline, but worthless for diesel and jet fuel. THOSE long chain molecules are quite prevalent in the heavy oil purchased at substantial discount from Canadian sources. The savings get passed onto you if you drive a diesel truck or eat food delivered by one. Also it saves you in airfare. But sure let's get rid of all that and go to European pricing of $8/gallon low sulfur diesel. I'm positive that cost won't ripple through the economy adversely. <sarc off>

[Boat + 1,323]

28 minutes ago, Ward Smith said:

Here's the problem boat. Refineries are great at splitting long chain molecules but they can't add them together. The light sweet crude is fine for making gasoline, but worthless for diesel and jet fuel. THOSE long chain molecules are quite prevalent in the heavy oil purchased at substantial discount from Canadian sources. The savings get passed onto you if you drive a diesel truck or eat food delivered by one. Also it saves you in airfare. But sure let's get rid of all that and go to European pricing of $8/gallon low sulfur diesel. I'm positive that cost won't ripple through the economy adversely. <sarc off>

Let me help you Ward. The US exports aprox. 121,000 barrels of jet fuel that we dont consume. Lets throw in 1.4 mbpd exports of diesel every day.  Not only do we not need another pipeline from Canada but we could clean up a lot of air/land by importing only what we do need for consumption. 

Lets be FF independant but we dont owe the world refined petroleum products at the expense of pollution in the US.

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

4 minutes ago, Boat said:

Let me help you Ward. The US exports aprox. 121,000 barrels of jet fuel that we dont consume. Lets throw in 1.4 mbpd exports of diesel every day.  Not only do we not need another pipeline from Canada but we could clean up a lot of air/land by importing only what we do need for consumption. 

Lets be FF independant but we dont owe the world refined petroleum products at the expense of pollution in the US.

So you're saying it's OK for those crappy refineries in other countries to pollute Their locality so long as we're not polluting Ours? Mexico gets most of its refined product from us and we get most of their crude exports. Do you think we're net ahead if we stop shipping them refined fuels and they slap dash a refinery across the border from Texas? Think they'll do a better job operating it than we will? 

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

Nobody sems to want to discuss the fact that we, collectively (farmers, ranchers, municipalities, etc....) have been pumping water out of the Ogallala aquifer at rates much, much higher than the recharge rates. This has been going on for decades.

We seem to be bound and determined to drain the aquifer. For example, just consider the urban sprawl around ANY city located near the aquifer over the past 50 years - where do you think they get their water?

This is much more of a threat to the aquifer but you never hear this from our tree hugging friends.

[Tom Kirkman + 8,860]

13 hours ago, Jan van Eck said:

So let me see if I understand your reasoning here.  You set forth the proposition that, because historically your family were unbelievable abusers of the land, and despoiled it in a willful and wanton way by dumping massive amounts of chemicals and weed killers with abandon, therefore nobody should be concerned about toxic oil spills from fractured pipelines over the same lands?  That strikes me as a proposition without merit, in all candor. 

Nope, you are way off base here, Jan.  I was simply replying to Old-Ruffneck's comment.  Context matters.

Old-Ruffneck said:

On 4/4/2019 at 7:25 PM, Old-Ruffneck said:

Guaranteed the farmers have been polluting with nitrogens and other chemicals to make their crops grow much faster, and produce more. Just a little east here in central Illinois the san koty aquafer very high in nitrates due to nitrogen. I bet if ya sample the said aquifer you will come up with about the same pollutants. Corn and beans take a lot of chemicals to produce the bio-fuels and the farmers are putting down wicked crap to make it grow. And yes I am on a well and it's high in nitrates. Didn't test for other crap as I don't wanna know what specific carcinogens are in my water. 

 

And my reply to Old-Ruffneck, confirming that farmers do indeed use lots of nitrogen and chemicals to make crops grow more, better, and faster.  This is not exactly news.

On 4/5/2019 at 6:24 AM, Tom Kirkman said:

Yep, confirmed.  I grew up on a Dairy + cash crop farm in the U.S. Midwest.  50 cows and 2 square miles of farm land.  Soybeans were our biggest cash crop, along with corn, wheat and oats.

Every Spring we put truckload after truckload of fertilizer and chemicals on the fields after planting, to increase crop growth.

From memory, the stack of bags of fertilizer used every Spring was around 8 feet tall x 18 feet wide × 12 feet deep (stacked on top of straw bales in a shed to keep the bags of fertilizer dry).  That's a lot of fetilizer, just for our family farm.  Fertilizer is typically nitrogen from urea.  Don't eat fertilizer, it can make you pretty darn sick.

And then later on we usually sprayed highly toxic weed killer on stubborn fields where weeds continued to grow even after we walked up and down every dang row and pulled out the bigger weeds by hand (Pulling weeds by hand is back breaking work, although picking up the fresh Spring crop of new rocks that got pushed up to the surface after the winter freezing / thawing and plowing the field routine was more back breaking than pulling those darn weeds).

And sometimes sprayed liquid ammonia + nitrate + urea solution on the fields to increase crop growth.  Seriously smelly stuff.

Modern cash crop farming is highly chemical intensive.

Anyway, end of off-topic tangent about farms.

Back now to pipelines.

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,190]

2 hours ago, Boat said:

Let me help you Ward. The US exports....

Let me help you Boat: Its called Economics.... Economy of scale that the small nation Carribean, Central America, S. America and even Africa cannot hope to achieve.  Economics... You know those nasty J-O-B-S things that allow you to purchase internet access and bitch on the internet while shipping more and more industry overseas to dictatorships and then claiming that the Consumer price index has fallen and therefore everything is great.... Yea, amazing how slave labor lowers the cost of goods isn't it?  Short term it is great, profits way up, stock price up, dividends up, until you look around and notice everyone has service jobs and you pray there is no war because NO ONE knows how to do anything other than sit on their ass behind a computer doing marketing, or sitting home watching soap operas as none of them know how to BUILD anything anymore.  Also might notice that companies like Milwaukee tool company has ZERO manufacturing in the USA, but their headquarters is in Fort Lauderdale, Florida(zero manufacturing) where the big wigs can have their $20 million yacht close by to go to "meetings" in the Bahamas.  Headquarters moved .... Conveniently after all the manufacturing was moved to China...

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

2 hours ago, Wastral said:

Let me help you Boat: Its called Economics.... Economy of scale that the small nation Carribean, Central America, S. America and even Africa cannot hope to achieve.  Economics... You know those nasty J-O-B-S things that allow you to purchase internet access and bitch on the internet while shipping more and more industry overseas to dictatorships and then claiming that the Consumer price index has fallen and therefore everything is great.... Yea, amazing how slave labor lowers the cost of goods isn't it?  Short term it is great, profits way up, stock price up, dividends up, until you look around and notice everyone has service jobs and you pray there is no war because NO ONE knows how to do anything other than sit on their ass behind a computer doing marketing, or sitting home watching soap operas as none of them know how to BUILD anything anymore.  Also might notice that companies like Milwaukee tool company has ZERO manufacturing in the USA, but their headquarters is in Fort Lauderdale, Florida(zero manufacturing) where the big wigs can have their $20 million yacht close by to go to "meetings" in the Bahamas.  Headquarters moved .... Conveniently after all the manufacturing was moved to China...

Largely in agreement here but there's one more macroeconomic point to consider. At some time in the future, when all these millennials are in charge and America hasn't built anything in, like, forever, the propensity of these foreign countries to continue shipping goods to us for a pittance will cease. Our paper currency will become relatively worthless.

But arguing the point with millennials is a worthless endeavor, just like the argument I had with one in the grocery store who said we shouldn't be killing poor helpless cattle when we can just buy hamburger in the store. She seemed mystified when I tried to explain dead cattle is where the grocery store Gets the beef!

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

9 hours ago, Douglas Buckland said:

Nobody sems to want to discuss the fact that we, collectively (farmers, ranchers, municipalities, etc....) have been pumping water out of the Ogallala aquifer at rates much, much higher than the recharge rates. This has been going on for decades.

We seem to be bound and determined to drain the aquifer. For example, just consider the urban sprawl around ANY city located near the aquifer over the past 50 years - where do you think they get their water?

This is much more of a threat to the aquifer but you never hear this from our tree hugging friends.

Doug, you are presciently correct that the major threat to the Ogallala is the draw-down rate.  Yet the protocols of the Army Corps of Engineers is the big obstacle to re-charging.  To explain:  the Corps was charged with building big dams on the rivers that flow above the aquifer, ostensibly for flood-control and mandated to provide a certain level in the lake, for recreation.  So the Corps does not allow diverting any of that water to be spread over the land above the aquifer, which would provide for natural recharge.  Nor does it allow drilling down into the aquifer and allowing the lake waters from behind those dams to flow naturally to the aquifer, for recharge.  Indeed, the Corps simply sits on the lakes, maintaining the level for "recreation." 

What you end up with is a playground for a select few, those with motorboats and water skis, and everybody else be damned.  The Corps will not even allow the water level to drop when the Mississippi gets so low that the barge traffic halts. It is considered "not their mandate." This is a classic governmental failure, where officious bureaucrats take a Directive so literally that everyone else suffers.  Consider the current flooding in Nebraska.  Could the various upstream dams have held back the snowmelt?  No, because the dam lakes were being held full. If the dams were set up to allow the lakes to drain lower, over the winter, down into the aquifer, then the torrent of snowmelt could be attenuated by trapping some portion of new Spring waterflow behind the dams, and allowing the riverbeds downstream to discharge the rest without widespread flooding. Meanwhile all the water would be back in the aquifer, or possibly diverted to other artificial lakes constructed as storage points.  These societal benefits are blocked due to the mendacity of bureaucrats. 

It would take someone such as Trump, with his Executive Orders, to turn that around.  Would Trump do that?  Nope, that is not his focus. I can see possibly Mike Pence doing that, but again it is not likely his focus. Who is prepared to say: "Your winter Ice Fishing is less important than a secure freshwater supply in the MidWest States," and stick to it, a damn the torpedoes stance, in today's political world?  I just don't see it happening.  (Then again, you folks haven't voted me your President, either, or you bet it would happen!) 😀

[tetonper + 17]

@Jack Van Eck, you obviously do not know anything about pipelines.  They are much safer then rail or trucking environmentally but let's forget all those hours long arguments because anti-oil won't accept years of facts and go straight to the parts you don't understand.  One properly built which is the common these days contrary to your belief (I have been involved in building and operating thousands of miles of pipelines that have withstood major flooding, wet soil conditions and other issues with zero leaks except for man made issues which will happen with trucking or rail too (humankind causes a large percentages of incidents in air, water, land and underground).  As for crossing over rivers with traffic, you obviously have not been to New Orleans area or very far up and down the Mississippi, Arkansas, Missouri, Columbia, Flaming Gorge Reservoir and Snake rivers to name a few and probably a ton of them out east too.  Suspension hanging pipelines are built all the time over places with water traffic and survive hurricanes, windstorms, ice loads and other naturally occurring events.  Please bring facts when you talk.  All the hyperbole is just repeated anti-oil and gas to scare the majority who don't know the truth.  As for the Ogallala Aquifer there are a bunch of lines far more dangerous that need upgrading or replaced that have leaks almost every year because people like you don't allow new modern lines to be laid.  How do I know these lines are there, look at a map of Nebr and see how many lines run across the state.  Some are very old!

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

3 hours ago, tetonper said:

@Jack Van Eck, you obviously do not know anything about pipelines.  They are much safer then rail or trucking environmentally but let's forget all those hours long arguments because anti-oil won't accept years of facts and go straight to the parts you don't understand.  One properly built which is the common these days contrary to your belief (I have been involved in building and operating thousands of miles of pipelines that have withstood major flooding, wet soil conditions and other issues with zero leaks except for man made issues which will happen with trucking or rail too (humankind causes a large percentages of incidents in air, water, land and underground).  As for crossing over rivers with traffic, you obviously have not been to New Orleans area or very far up and down the Mississippi, Arkansas, Missouri, Columbia, Flaming Gorge Reservoir and Snake rivers to name a few and probably a ton of them out east too.  Suspension hanging pipelines are built all the time over places with water traffic and survive hurricanes, windstorms, ice loads and other naturally occurring events.  Please bring facts when you talk.  All the hyperbole is just repeated anti-oil and gas to scare the majority who don't know the truth.  As for the Ogallala Aquifer there are a bunch of lines far more dangerous that need upgrading or replaced that have leaks almost every year because people like you don't allow new modern lines to be laid.  How do I know these lines are there, look at a map of Nebr and see how many lines run across the state.  Some are very old!

Teton, your otherwise excellent post was ruined with the first sentence. We can keep the quality of this site up, by keeping the personal attacks down. I think we're all here to learn and Jan has his expertise as do we all. It's good to get other perspectives and we appreciate yours. No one else seems to have direct pipeline Industry experience (my knowledge comes through friends) so your perspective can be invaluable now and going forward.

But let's try and be respectful of each other. I confronted Jan earlier in this thread and pseudo apologized at the end by saying I wasn't trying to bust his chops. I really wasn't trying to bust his chops but have my own perspective of the difficulty of making bitumen flow, period. The Kalamazoo River disaster proves "dilbit" can flow and did. Obviously the operators were morons by not only Not shutting down the pipeline when their instruments told them there was a leak, but exacerbated the problem by Increasing the flow for more than half a day. Human error

Edited April 6, 2019 by Ward Smith

[ronwagn + 6,290]

20 hours ago, Ward Smith said:

Here's the problem boat. Refineries are great at splitting long chain molecules but they can't add them together. The light sweet crude is fine for making gasoline, but worthless for diesel and jet fuel. THOSE long chain molecules are quite prevalent in the heavy oil purchased at substantial discount from Canadian sources. The savings get passed onto you if you drive a diesel truck or eat food delivered by one. Also it saves you in airfare. But sure let's get rid of all that and go to European pricing of $8/gallon low sulfur diesel. I'm positive that cost won't ripple through the economy adversely. <sarc off>

Switching to natural gas will eliminate the need for low sulfur diesel. It is much cheaper than diesel so hopefully the trend toward natural gas trucking, busing will increase. 

http://www.ngvglobal.com/

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

9 hours ago, tetonper said:

@Jack Van Eck, you obviously do not know anything about pipelines.

" the parts you don't understand."

"Please bring facts when you talk"

"just repeated anti-oil and gas to scare the majority"

"because people like you don't allow new modern lines to be laid"

------------------------------------------------------

Well, it sure is always nice to be criticized.  Just lovely.  Just for the record, though, it is not my provenance to "allow" or "not allow."  I am not in authority, either regulatory or political.  Whatever happens out there, it just swirls past me.  Oh, well. 

Edited April 6, 2019 by Jan van Eck

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

23 hours ago, Ward Smith said:

Here's the problem boat. Refineries are great at splitting long chain molecules but they can't add them together.

Can't is a strong word; you can dehydrogenate an alkane to an alkene and then polymerize the alkenes into a larger alkane. Usually it's not profitable for fuels, except for maybe increasing octane rating by creating more branched alkanes, but the plastic industry does that kind of stuff all the time.

[ceo_energemsier + 1,818]

26 minutes ago, Enthalpic said:

Can't is a strong word; you can dehydrogenate an alkane to an alkene and then polymerize the alkenes into a larger alkane. Usually it's not profitable for fuels, except for maybe increasing octane rating by creating more branched alkanes, but the plastic industry does that kind of stuff all the time.

It could be true, however the plastics petchem process engineering is different than crude distillation, cracking and reforming for liquid fuels and feedstock

Edited April 7, 2019 by ceo_energemsier
error

[ceo_energemsier + 1,818]

On 4/5/2019 at 5:48 PM, Boat said:

So why do we need this oil anyway? It's certainly not for US consumption. Why does the US need the millions of barrels imported, refined and rexported to other countries.  Do we really need the foreign owned refineries who represent 30% of US refining capacity. 

For the oil producers in the US how does another pipeline from Canada do anything but drive prices lower.

Many of you complain about the overproduction in the Permain but love the idea of adding oil to the market from a foreign country and dump it in the Gulf. Weird unless your anti-American.

Not all crude oil is created equal and neither are all refineries capable of running and processing the same feedstock. Majority of today's refineries globally were built in a time period where there was plenty of sour crude coming out of the Mid-East , LATAM etc. These refineries including the ones in the US were built and configured to run high sulphur sour crudes. Also refineries do not just refine one type of crude oil, they blend various streams (different types) of crude oils to achieve a blend that is suitable for their refinery equipment/configuration and product slate and the quality and specs of those products.

And its called international trade buy something from here, sell something over there depending on demand and needs

Foreign owned refineries in the US are the same as the US owned refineries in other countries. For example XOM as an American company has refineries in Asia, Mid East etc and some companies from other countries have refineries in the US. How is that bad? That would also mean that other industries should not have their manufacturing, distribution and marketing networks outside of their domicile jurisidiction.

The US produced oil is certainly for the most part for US consumption being refined in US refineries and being blended with domestic and imported crude oils to obtain the optimal refining feedstock to obtain the max end products based on the needs of end products.

So far US exports over 2mil bpd of crude oil, which will increase over time and it brings in trade $$$$ also aiding in reducing trade deficits.

Another pipeline from Canada helps bring down more blending crude oil feedstock for one, for two it will also aide in the export volumes of blended crude oils.

[Old-Ruffneck + 1,239]

2 hours ago, ceo_energemsier said:

Another pipeline from Canada helps bring down more blending crude oil feedstock for one, for two it will also aide in the export volumes of blended crude oils.

And I think economically it is more beneficial to trade/buy/sellback to our Northern neighbor and rely less on Mideast oil. Just sayin'...….

[Oil Dude + 12]

On 4/5/2019 at 11:53 AM, ceo_energemsier said:

Dear NON COMMIE

Most of the US crude oil export is light low sulphur crude oil , Canada buys that more than likely to blend with their heavy tar sands crude oil. Canadian oil producers have been buying US shale condensates from the get go to use as a diluent for their heavy tar sands crude. Some or a large percentage of that diluted syncrude is shipped back down to the US refineries.  Crude oil blending to a) make it easier for heavy , thick crude to move easily via pipelines , trains and not be heated and increasing the api and reducing the sulphur for refining feedstocks.

South Korea, Japan, China, India and other buyers of US crude are looking at quality and their refinery configuration and their end product slate and crude feedstock blending needs in addition to the stability of the supply, logistics, transportation, insurance etc costs and they are able to maintain a profitable crack spread and refinery margins, therefore they are buying US crude oil. The majority of US crude oil exported now is not high in sulphur and lighter than most Mid East sourced crude oils and easier to refine into lighter distillates and high value light end products and easier on the refinery equipment.

Hi Energemeister. The crude imports are not blended with oil sands oil. You need to understand that there is an abrupt wall in Quebec such that oil imports from Western Canada do not make it east of Montreal. Most of the those oil imports from the USA go to the Irving refinery in New Brunswick. Much of the refined products go back to the eastern USA coastal cities and the rest to eastern Canada. 

However, there is condensate imported into Canada on the Cochin pipeline  to be mixed with oil sands oil to make it possible to pump it down pipelines. Canada produces a lot of its own condensate but not enough to satisfy the demand. 

[ceo_energemsier + 1,818]

1 hour ago, Oil Dude said:

Hi Energemeister. The crude imports are not blended with oil sands oil. You need to understand that there is an abrupt wall in Quebec such that oil imports from Western Canada do not make it east of Montreal. Most of the those oil imports from the USA go to the Irving refinery in New Brunswick. Much of the refined products go back to the eastern USA coastal cities and the rest to eastern Canada. 

However, there is condensate imported into Canada on the Cochin pipeline  to be mixed with oil sands oil to make it possible to pump it down pipelines. Canada produces a lot of its own condensate but not enough to satisfy the demand. 

I was referring to the heavy oil from Canada that uses condensate imported from the US into Canada to use as a diluent , the end result dilbit is shipped back down to the US. Irving buys US crude to process @ their NB refinery. I have been selling US condensate to Canadian importers since 2007, several other countries also buy US condensate for use as feedstock in petchem and or blending with other crude oils for refinery feedstock. Prior to the US having a condensate boom, I was marketing condensate from as far as Australia to be shipped to Canada.

Thanks

[ceo_energemsier + 1,818]

12 hours ago, Old-Ruffneck said:

And I think economically it is more beneficial to trade/buy/sellback to our Northern neighbor and rely less on Mideast oil. Just sayin'...….

It may very well be. Trade is dictated by demand and pricing and so far the demand seems to be coming in bigger volume from the East.

Selling US crude and products going East or West (in terms of shipping conveniance-voyage distance) to Asian and Euro markets seems to be bringing in a higher $ value per barrel compared to the products being sold within the northern hemisphere. But yes wherever there is a market we shall sell.

Thanks

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

17 hours ago, Enthalpic said:

Can't is a strong word; you can dehydrogenate an alkane to an alkene and then polymerize the alkenes into a larger alkane. Usually it's not profitable for fuels, except for maybe increasing octane rating by creating more branched alkanes, but the plastic industry does that kind of stuff all the time.

What CEO said above. I didn't mean to say it can't be done chemically, I meant refineries can't do it, it's not the way they are setup. I'll try to be more clear in my correspondence