If the refinery has a delayed coker, this problem goes away. They can chew up the asphalt stream in the heavy crude, get a cut of gasoline, coker gas oil (distillate) and other useful, upgradable products. Three new cokers at existing refineries are coming on line in 2006.
If the refinery has a delayed coker, this problem goes away. They can chew up the asphalt stream in the heavy crude, get a cut of gasoline, coker gas oil (distillate) and other useful, upgradable products. Three new cokers at existing refineries are coming on line in 2006.
Actually if I remember correctly as many as 8 refineries are upgrading their coker process and there are other improvements made constantly. Also most of the cracking units have to be upgrade to handle the temps. More cokers are required because the gas cut is less and the additional cokers allow them to maintain production. No new refineries should be built without the ability to handle heavy oil.
This effect is not produced by some invisible hand. "That fact is the more you make of something, the cheaper it should be for the unit price based on the nature of mass production yet, this is not occuring." Efficiencies, increased productivity and economies of scale come from better technologies which seem more feasible with mass production. However, without such innovations, mass production will not reduce unit costs. A case in point is the flu vaccine which requires millions of chicken eggs and painstaking manual labor. If you lower the cost by fiat like Hillary did, the company goes out of business.
To the poster who called for a Manhattan project, I say no way. The oil biz is already the most overregulated biz there is, and the last thing the energy sector needs is more input from the lawyers in Congress, the EPA, etc. The oil companies will allocate their record profits in ways that make economic sense and are best positioned to evaluate information such as this.
Check out the latest Manhattan project to see when the WTC will get rebuilt, if you want an example of paralysis your suggestion would bring about.