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Crude Oil Prices - Crude oil prices mainly for the USA. Details on crude oil prices per barrel, the crude oil price history and what events caused the price rises, the current crude oil prices, how crude oil is refined and more.
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Crude Oil Refining (Petroleum refining) is the process of separating the many compounds present in crude oil which then are selectively changed into new products.
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Crude Oil Refining
A refinery (factory) takes crude oil and turns it into gasoline and hundreds of other useful products.
They also pollute our air, water, and land.
A typical refinery costs billions of dollars to build and millions
more to maintain A refinery runs twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a
year and requires a large number of employees to run. A refinery can
occupy as much land as several hundred football fields. Workers ride
bicycles to move from place to place inside the complex.
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Oil Refinery
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There are four primary activities that occur in crude oil refining processes:
- Seperation - Separating hydrocarbons (e.g., distillation)
- Conversion - Creating hydrocarbons (e.g., cracking/coking, alkylation and reforming)
- Combination - Blending hydrocarbons
- Treatment - Removing impurities (e.g., sulfur removal)
Different refineries perform some or all of these four activities, depending on the raw materials used and the products created.
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US Refining Capacity by Region 2004
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World Refining Capacity 2003
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The most relevant links we could find, placed here free
 Refinery Infosheet
- EIA's Energy Kids' Page explains the basics of refining. www.eia.doe.gov
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Richmond Refinery, Fluid Catalytic Cracking (FCC) Distillation Column
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Crude Oil Refining
- Article by the Environmental Defense Fund. www.edf.org
How a Refinery Works
- An interactive tutorial by Irving Oil. www.irvingoil.com
How Oil Refining Works
- Article by by Howstuffworks examines the chemistry and technology involved in refining crude oil to produce
gasoline and other products. www.howstuffworks.com
Oil & Gas Refining
- Information with links to more resources on the topic from BERA: Issue 5/6 (Business Reference Services, Library of Congress). www.loc.gov
Crude Oil Refining In Action
- An interactive refinery diagram by Neste Oil showing and explaining the various stages of the refining process
and how gasoline is produced. www.webannualreport2005.nesteoil.com
Oil Refinery
- Wikipedia article about oil refineries. en.wikipedia.org
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Drilling Rig Near Sable Island
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Refining
- Chapter from Oil Market Basics. www.eia.doe.gov
Refining and Processing
- EIA's Petroleum Refining and Processing page. tonto.eia.doe.gov
The gas and crude oil refining industry is dominated by only a few large
corporations. The largest oil company is Exxon Mobil, with British
Petroleum at 2nd, followed by Royal Dutch/Shell as the 3rd largest.
These oil companies in particular, are considered 'integrated' oil
corporations meaning they operate in all factors of production,
refining and marketing.
Anything that goes into a refinery and does not come out as a product
such as gasoline or diesel ends up as pollution. According to federal right-to-know data, in 1997 alone, over 100
million pounds of toxic substances from U.S. refineries (crude oil refining) were reported
released to the environment or transferred to other facilities for
recycling, treatment, or disposal.
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Site written by Nigel Romany