[thematt]

It's not just a matter of building more refineries to process it. The different API Gravities of the oil are used to output different products. Gasoline, jet fuel, etc.

So yes, you could modify refineries (at significant expense) to process different grades of crude, but in order to target different outputs we still need to import the different grades of oil because the refineries end up mixing/matching to get the levels they need. The US produces a lot of light oil, but less of the medium/heavy grades you'll find in Canada or the Middle East.

[myself248]

You seem to be the first to mention, something that I think is of supreme interest: How adaptable are the refineries? All oil must have variations in its properties, and every refinery must be able to cope with a certain amount of variation.

If you have a refinery that's built for heavy sour oil, how much lighter and sweeter can it handle without any modifications at all? And how much time and money does it take to broaden its range further?

What are the heavier grades used for, I'd imagine stuff like bunker fuel and asphalt? If the prices of those end products went up, wouldn't the market adapt to a certain degree, say using more concrete and less asphalt, etc?

[thematt]

Lighter oils get used for gasoline, diesel, and aviation fuels. Heavy oils get used for plastics, petrochemicals, and road surfacing.

I wish there was an easy answer to your refinery question. They're all different, but there are three basic types of refineries:

The simplest is a topping plant, which is basically just a distillation unit. The output you get is basically whatever the natural yield of the oil is. These refineries can typically only process light crudes.

The next level refinery is a cracking refinery. These take the gas oil output from the distillation and breaks it down further using high temperature, pressure, and catalysts. This allows for the breakdown of slightly heavier crudes.

The final level is a coking refinery. This takes all the residual fuel and "cracks" it into a lighter product. This increases the yield of higher value gasoline, which allows a refinery to take in cheaper heavier crudes.

Building a new refinery is a 5+ year process that costs about $7-10 billion. I'm not sure what upgrading an existing one costs, but it's somewhere in that ballpark. Keep in mind that a large influence on the type of refinery is their geographic location. They're built to accept the type of oil that flows in the pipelines.