Since things at my fiat mining job are painfully slow I am catching up on my watch later YouTube videos and came across these videos about crude oil. Since I am a nerd at heart I was always curious to know what is considered a good oil for refining for gasoline. This short 3 min video did an excellent job breaking down the make up of oil and which is the best oil for making gas. Since they did everything in slides I screen captured the ones I thought had the most value

This graphic was surprising to me. The oil to the far right is the lightest! Thus is the best for making gasoline. But even heavy oil has its place in the modern economy with the making of important materials like asphalt for roads. But higher the API value the lighter the oil. Color has no impact

The video discusses other important properties of oil like sweetness which is related to the sulfur content and TAN count which is related to how corrosive the oil is. The lower the sulfur the sweeter the oil and the lower the TAN count the less corrosive the oil is. So to keep gas prices low you want oil that you can process fairly easily thus in this slide the ideal oil is “light, sweet, and low” if you want cheap gas.

These three slides lead me to understand why gasoline has always been cheaper here in the USA than in Europe. Most of my life I have read or heard about Europeans paying so much more for gas than Americans and how lucky we were. But this graphic really puts everything into perspective for me. Looking at the worlds oil sources the oil that is pumped in the USA is on the high end of the spectrum of light, sweet, and low thus makes it easier to refine which leads to cheaper gasoline prices which even more shocking is that most of the OPEC nations have low quality oil. Only the oil from Algeria is better quality.

Now this slide doesn’t graph the TAN count so maybe WTI might be more corrosive than the OPEC oil but this really shocking to see.

USA really doesn’t need OPEC oil for gasoline. The US can be self sustaining and produce all the oil and gasoline it needs domestically and become a major player in oil exports (which has been the case over the last few years)

How oil is taken from the ground

The video didn’t discuss the fracking process which is a hot button issue in politics but just imagine how much this equipment can changed based upon the oil properties. If you have a heavy oil supply the pumps and piping needed to extract it will change tremendously.

Pipelines to Oil Refineries in the USA

Another reason why US gas prices are so cheap. Billions of dollars are deployed to move supply to refineries quickly to make gas. People always underestimate the geography the USA is blessed with to make this complex tax of making gasoline as low cost as possible

The separation process

The distillation tower is very fascinating at different boiling points the oil is captured and turned into different products. Here I was expecting a high energy input cost to distill the oil to gasoline quality but it isn’t so much compared to the heat needed for asphalt.

Amount of Gas per Barrel of Oil

45% of a 42 gallon barrel of gas is good for gasoline. Keep this in mind when you review USA oil production data. All the oil pumped by the USA is not turned into 100% gasoline.

The YouTube algorithm can be a blessing and a curse. Since I have been viewing more science and engineering content, YourTube suggested these two fantastic videos about crude oil and gasoline.

So the next time you fill up your tank and thing damn this $4.50 per gallon is killing me think of this post and all the work that goes in to try and make that price at the pump become cheaper. These companies have every incentive to sell as much gas as possible.