California refinery fire will boost gasoline prices, experts say

AP via ADN.com ^ | TERRY COLLINS | TERRY COLLINS

[thackney]

A major fire at one of the country's biggest oil refineries that sent scores of people to hospitals with breathing problems will push gas prices above $4 a gallon on the West Coast, analysts said Tuesday.

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Font size : A | A | A The fire, which sent plumes of black smoke over the San Francisco Bay area, erupted Monday evening in the massive Chevron refinery about 10 miles northeast of San Francisco.

It was out early Tuesday, although officials were still conducting a controlled burn.

...

It produces about 150,000 barrels of gasoline a day — 16 percent of the West Coast's daily gasoline consumption of 963,000 barrels, according to Kloza.

[thackney]

A refinery constantly takes flammable liquids, heats them above it’s auto-ignition temperature.

They are dangerous facilities. It is why they pay more, have their own fire fighting crews and go through constant safety training.

Your list does not include hundreds of other fires for the same years.

[thackney]

Chevron would start their own infrastructure on fire to raise prices

- - - -

Of course, they want their competition to make more money while they are shut down.

(the sad part is, I need a sarcasm tag around here for that statement)

[thackney]

More info on start of fire:

The leak started as a drip at about 4:15 p.m. Monday, officials said. Chevron — which is required to “immediately” notify the public of any gas leak, fire or oil spill, according to state law — did not consider it an immediate danger to residents nearby.

“At that point in time, there really wasn’t anything we could advise the community to do,” said Mark Ayers, the refinery’s fire chief. “We surely wouldn’t advise anybody to shelter in place.”

The company’s engineers began stripping away insulation on the leaky pipe to investigate the source, which released a vapor of a flammable substance similar to diesel. About two and a half hours later, a conflagration had officials scrambling to warn residents to stay inside.

Chevron officials notified Contra Costa County so it could activate its emergency warning system, said Randy Sawyer, director of the county’s health services agency.

http://fuelfix.com/blog/2012/08/08/chevron-response-to-refinery-fire-under-criticism/

[ZirconEncrustedTweezers]

In other news, you will get wet if you run through a sprinkler.

[ripley]

“...released a vapor of a flammable substance similar to diesel...”

Still doesn’t pass the smell test.

IMHO

[thackney]

In my opinion, after working projects in multiple refineries, it does.

Cheers

[FreedomPoster]

Why do we need “experts” to tell us that the law of supply and demand has not been rescinded?

[ripley]

“In my opinion, after working projects inmultiple refineries, it does.”

Hoping that it doesn’t sound as if one is entering into tinfoil-hat territory, one wonders what really might have happened if different from the official explanation.

Question: What the heck is a flammable vapor that’s similar to diesel?

Regards.

[thackney]

Hoping that it doesn’t sound as if one is entering into tinfoil-hat territory, one wonders what really might have happened if different from the official explanation.

Given the huge amount of reporting and 3rd party investigation that goes into every significant refinery, it would a rather foolish act to mislead.

What the heck is a flammable vapor that’s similar to diesel?

A refinery has lots of process units and intermediate steps prior to making a finished product. It will be a vapor because it is so hot in the process. Likely once it cools down after spending time outside the pipe, it would coalesces into a liquid.

It really isn't diesel until all the additives are in sulfur removed and meets the ASTM specification. I read that the fire started in the Crude Unit. That is one of the early steps and essentially no finished refined product comes out of that unit. In a crude distillation tower, the fluid is heated between ~625°F to ~7000°F. Most of the crude oil is turned into vapor at this point.

[thackney]

Some other units will go even higher temperatures.

Here is an example of the next process, the vacuum distillation taking a deep cut up to 1,000°F to 1,150°F

http://www.ogj.com/articles/print/volume-104/issue-31/processing/refinery-revamp-1-conocophillips-revamps-crude-unit-to-increase-flexibility-profitability.html

[ripley]

Thanks!

[Carry_Okie]

Only with the complicity of the State could production capacity be so tight.

[Carry_Okie]

In a crude distillation tower, the fluid is heated between ~625°F to ~7000°F.

I assume that making the unit small with high speed throughput lowers the amount of heat necessary for the process. Yet throughput at this kind of temperature means higher pressure and lots of complicated valving.

How high? I'd guess over a 1,000 psi.

[thackney]

Only with the complicity of the State could production capacity be so tight.

Really? You believe that businesses intending to make a profit routinely build manufacturing capacity they don't use for products exceed the market demand?

[thackney]

?I assume that making the unit small with high speed throughput lowers the amount of heat necessary for the process.

I don't understand that thought. A mass of material is going to require the delivery of the same amount of BTU's to raise it to a set temperature, regardless of the velocity it moves through the system.

However, as the velocity increases, you have less time to deliver the BTU's requiring either greater heat levels in the exchanger, or larger exchangers to supply enough heat quickly.

[thackney]

How high? I'd guess over a 1,000 psi.

No, you have to take volume into account. It doesn't automatically go that high just because heat is added because pipe and vessel diameter could be larger downstream.

In the example of the vacuum distillation column up to 1,150°F, that type of unit operates down to 10 mbar (1,000 Pa, 7.5 mmHg).

http://processengineers.blogspot.com/2008/04/oil-refining-vacuum-distillation-vdu.html

[Carry_Okie]

You believe that businesses intending to make a profit routinely build manufacturing capacity they don't use for products exceed the market demand?

Absolutely. I was in a chemical manufacturing business and we did exactly that so that we could meet demand while incurring downtime for maintenance, construction, and upgrades. To us, it was a matter of keeping our customers happy. In California, gasoline producers don't need to worry about that, because of boutique formulations called for by the complicit thugs in the Air Resources Board, chief of whom was a lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council. Yeah, them again, those greenie thugs working for major petrochemical energy investors. You don't want to get it.

An example is that we pay nearly twice the price for gasoline on a cost per mile basis as they do in Texas. I know this from personal experience: We took a cross-country vacation in 2010. We were paying $2.65 for an 86 octane formulation and traveling at 65-70mph in a Chrysler minivan. When we got to Texas we were paying far less than $2 for an 82 octane formulation, and getting 25-27 mpg at 80 mph.

The producers couldn't get away with that without a closed market. That's why the NRDC is their best friend.

[Carry_Okie]

I don't understand that thought. A mass of material is going to require the delivery of the same amount of BTU's to raise it to a set temperature, regardless of the velocity it moves through the system.

The thought was that higher pressures would mean more material in a given volume. That means a smaller vessel. That reduces the surface-to-volume ratio for heat transfer and also means a shorter mean free path for the molecules to acquire that heat. So premise was related to efficiency of heat transfer, not the amount of heat a particular mass of material would require. I asked that question because of the risk associated with higher operating pressures at those temperatures.

[thackney]

Okay, I understand why you took it that way.

Material would have to get exotic/expensive if you try to maintain 1,000°F at 1,000 psi.

[thackney]

Absolutely. I was in a chemical manufacturing business and we did exactly that so that we could meet demand while incurring downtime for maintenance, construction, and upgrades.

Did all of your competition produce the exact same product, same specification? The only difference in gasoline brands is the additives added at the loading rack.

Refining margins are very tight. The don't allow to spend hundreds of millions of dollars per major unit to duplicate capacity and not use it.