[Wonder Warthog]

"Heavy crude can be produced and transported from Alaska and oil sands of Alberta. Instead we bow to market forces and buy heavy crude from the middle east. Absurd."

Why bother with heavy crude at all?? As fracking continues to spread, more and more light sweet will become available. The refineries will be re-vamped to handle it. ALL the Texas/Louisiana refineries were originally designed to handle lights...returning them to that capability is certainly easily possible.

[bakkentom]

Heavy crude versus light. I may be wrong but there is a distinction between the two.

I believe heavy produces more diesel. Light produces percentage wise more gasoline.

Am too lazy to find it, probably in eia Web pages somewhere.

Around the Bakken in ND there is a refinery in Belfield that produces diesel for ND trucking but ships the naphtha for further processing elsewhere to get gasoline.