• What is a petroleum refinery?
  • A petroleum refinery is a set of installations intended to transform crude oil, generally unusable as such, into petroleum products: motor gasoline, jet fuel, diesel fuel, fuel oil, lubricants, liquefied petroleum gases, naphtha, and so on. The products consumed in largest volumes are motor gasoline, motor diesel, and heavy fuel oil.
  • Why do small refineries exist?
  • Only geographical reasons (proximity to crude oil, e.g., in the United States; proximity to isolated markets, e.g., in Africa) can justify the existence of small refineries. The degree of complexity of a refinery naturally increases the cost of processing a ton of crude oil. This is mainly due to higher cost of capital and maintenance.
  • What is the average capacity of a refinery?
  • The average capacity of a refinery is therefore around 150,000 b/d or nearly 8 Mt./year. The Jamnagar refinery is the largest oil refinery in the world since 2008, with a processing capacity of 1.24 million barrels per day (more than 60 million tons per year, almost equivalent to the capacity of a major European country!).
  • How do refiners become sustainable and integrated with petrochemicals?
  • Driven by the endless quest to capture more value from every drop of oil, many refiners aim to become sustainable, connected and integrated with petrochemicals. But the path they take to get there is unique to each refinery and defined by staged capital investments over a period of time.
  • Which is the largest oil refinery in the world?
  • The Jamnagar refinery is the largest oil refinery in the world since 2008, with a processing capacity of 1.24 million barrels per day (more than 60 million tons per year, almost equivalent to the capacity of a major European country!). Located in Gujarat, India, it is owned by Reliance Industries.
  • Could biorefineries be a renewable fuel plant?
  • In the longer term, as the demand for refined oil products decreases globally, some refineries could have a second life as renewable fuel plants, such as biorefineries to produce biofuels. 4 Acquiring these assets now provides a low-cost option to participate in renewable fuel production or other green manufacturing opportunities in the future.