Top 20 Largest Refining Companies/Refiners in the U.S. as of Jan 1, 2011

by David Rachovich

Refiners' Total Operable Atmospheric Crude Oil Distillation Capacity 

Rank  Jan 1, 2011	Company	No. of Refineries	Barrels per Calendar Day (b/cd)*
1.	ConocoPhillips (USA)**	13	2,041,000
2.	ExxonMobil (USA)***	7	1,951,490
3.	Valero Energy Corp. (USA)	12	1,682,300
4.	BP (UK)^	6	1,368,050
5.	Marathon Oil Corp. (USA)	6	1,142,000
6.	Chevron Corp. (USA)	6	1,027,271
7.	Royal Dutch/Shell (NL/UK)+	8	976,650
8.	PDVSA (Venezuela)#	4	854,050
9.	Koch Industries Inc. (Flint Hills Resources; USA)	3	771,578
10.	Sunoco Inc. (USA)	3	673,000
11.	Tesoro (USA)	7	657,300
12.	Saudi Aramco (Saudi Arabia)$	3	376,750
13.	PBF Energy (USA)	2	342,200
14.	Holly Corp. (USA)	4	285,350
15.	Access Industries (USA)	1	280,390
16.	Cenovus Energy (Canada)>	2	254,000
17.	Total (France)	1	232,000
18.	Alon (Israel)	4	231,500
19.	Western Refining Inc. (USA)	4	226,200
20.	Frontier Oil Corp. (USA)	2	185,000
U.S. Total^^		141"	17,736,370

*Includes partial interests in refineries not wholly owned by the company.  

**Including its 50% stake in the Wood River, Illinois, refinery and 50% stake in the Borger, Texas, refinery. WRB Refining LLC operates as a 50/50 joint venture between ConocoPhillips and Cenovus Energy (Calgary).

***Including its 50% stake in the Chalmette, Louisiana, refinery.

^Including its 50% stake in the BP-Husky, Toledo, Ohio, refinery.

+Including Shell's stakes in Motiva (i.e., its 50% stake in the Port Arthur, Texas, refinery; its 50% stake in the Convent, Louisiana, refinery; and its 50% stake in the Norco, Louisiana, refinery), and its 50% stake in the Deer Park, Texas, refinery.  

#Including its 50% stake in the Chalmette, Louisiana, refinery. Also, Citgo, a wholly-owned subsidiary of PDVSA, operates three refineries – Lakes Charles, Louisiana; Lemont, Illinois; and Corpus Christi, Texas.

$Consists of 50% stake in Motiva. Motiva is a 50/50 joint venture between Shell and Saudi Aramco.

>Consists of 50% stake in WRB Refining LLC (a 50/50 joint venture between ConocoPhillips and Cenovus), i.e., 50% stake in the Wood River, Illinois, refinery and 50% stake in the Borger, Texas, refinery.

^^Including other refineries but excluding Hovensa's 500,000 barrels-per-day refinery on the Caribbean island of St. Croix in the United States Virgin Islands. Hovensa is a joint venture between subsidiaries of Hess Corporation and Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA).

"Only refineries with atmospheric crude oil distillation capacity.

Notes: PBF Energy Company LLC on Tuesday, March 1, 2011, announced that its subsidiary, Toledo Refining Company LLC, has completed its purchase of the Toledo Refinery in Ohio from Sunoco, Inc. Separately, Western Refining  indefinitely suspended refining operations at the Bloomfield, New Mexico, refinery in November 2009.  Atmospheric crude oil distillation -- The refining process of separating crude oil components at atmospheric pressure by heating to temperatures of about 600 degrees to 750 degrees Fahrenheit (depending on the nature of the crude oil and desired products) and subsequent condensing of the fractions by cooling.

Source: Based on data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration/EIA, Refinery Capacity Report, Release date: Jun 24, 2011, Table 5, here.

(ConocoPhillips is the largest refiner in the United States, with crude oil distillation capacity of 2 million barrels per day as of Jan 1, 2011, followed by ExxonMobil and Valero. Also, please see my post "Top 10 Largest Refining Companies in Asia, the USA and Western Europe -- OGJ," and Aaron and David Rachovich, "Top 28 Largest Refineries in the U.S. as of Jan 1, 2011 -- EIA." Update: As of late 2012, the top 5 largest refiners/refining companies in the United States have been Valero/12 refineries with 2,096,500 b/cd of crude capacity, Phillips 66, ExxonMobil, BP and Marathon---please see Warren R. True and Leena Koottungal, "Asia, Middle East Lead Modest Recovery in Global Refining," OGJ, Dec 3, 2012, Table 2 in my post "World's Top 25 Largest Refiners, Jan 1, 2013 -- OGJ," Notes. For the USA, Valero has moved into the top spot for company-wide capacity, pushing Phillips 66 to No. 2 -- D.R.)

Purvin & Gertz Estimates Future [U.S.] Unconventional Oil Output

by Paula Dittrick, OGJ Senior Staff Writer, OGJ, Jun 24, 2011
Unconventional oil production from the Bakken, Eagle Ford, and Niobrara plays is expected to approach 900,000 b/d in 2015 and exceed 1.3 million b/d by 2020, a consultant forecast.

Purvin & Gertz Inc. estimates current oil production from the Bakken, Eagle Ford, and Niobrara plays at 350,000-400,000 b/d.

The Bakken formation is in North Dakota and Montana, the Eagle Ford is in South Texas, and the Niobrara is in Colorado and Wyoming.

Geoff Houlton, a vice-president with Purvin & Gertz in Houston, told OGJ that shale oil production likely will help offset US oil import volumes in coming years.

Increasing supplies of light, sweet crude from shale oil plays are expected to reduce oil imports of similar quality crude into the Gulf Coast by greater than 500,000 b/d by 2016, he said.

Purvin & Gertz released its base-case forecast in a study entitled “US Midcontinent Crude Oil Market Analysis,” which examined oil logistics and pricing. [Read more]

(Current production from the Eagle Ford is roughly 100,000 barrels per day of crude oil and condensate >> OGJ, May 6, 2011 or EPP press release May 3, 2011. Also, please see my post "BENTEK: Eagle Ford Crude Oil Production Expected to Grow Fivefold in Five Years," here. For maps of the Eagle Ford shale, please see here. For the map of North American shale plays from the U.S. Energy Information Administration/EIA, including the United States, Canada and Mexico, as of May 9, 2011, please see here. Operators increased North Dakota's Bakken production from less than 3,000 barrels per day in 2005 to over 230,000 barrels per day in 2010. The Bakken's share of total North Dakota oil production rose from about 3 percent to about 75 percent over the same period. North Dakota produced an average of 307,000 barrels of crude oil per day in 2010 and comprised about 5.6 percent of the nation's total crude production. The increase in U.S. crude oil production in 2010 was led by escalating horizontal drilling programs in U.S. shale plays---please see my post "United States: Oil Production from Shale Formations, 2005-2010 -- EIA," here. UPDATE: In its Twitter post on June 25th, Platts said, "About 50,000 b/d of Bakken crude oil not being shipped out of N. Dakota due to record flooding in Minot area: state official." -- D.R.)

World Watch [IEA Oil Release]

by Vincent Lauerman, New York, EI, Jun 23, 2011
International Energy Agency (IEA) Executive Director Nobuo Tanaka announced on Thursday [June 23] that the consumer organization's 28 member countries had agreed to release 60 million barrels of oil stocks – including 30 million bbl from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve [SPR] – in the coming month. Tanaka was following up on his implicit threat in May to unlock the reserves if Opec did not agree to increase supplies at its failed Jun. 8 meeting. The IEA has released strategic stocks twice before [please see details below -- D.R.], but this release clearly breaks with historical precedent [also, according to Peter Kemp, the IEA's release of oil stocks marks a new turn in oil market intervention---please see "World Watch," EI, Jun 24, 2011 -- D.R.]. Although the IEA framed the release in terms of the ongoing supply disruption in Libya, market sources say there is no actual shortage of physical crude. The IEA is instead making a pre-emptive move, looking ahead to “the threat of a serious market tightening” in the second half of the year, at a time when “world economies are still recovering.” Economic growth has been weakening, especially in OECD countries such as the US [...]

(In its 37-year history the IEA has collectively agreed to release strategic petroleum stocks only twice before to fill lost supplies -- in 1991 at the outbreak of the first Gulf War following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, and in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina damaged offshore oil rigs, pipelines and oil refineries in the Gulf of Mexico. Separately, please also see Petroleum Economist (PE) commentary -- The IEA's release of crude from strategic stocks is less about Libya than about the global economy - and it should send oil prices tumbling, says the editor of PE Derek Brower. Also, please see retweets by me on Twitter dated June 23, here. The IEA has been warning since the turn of the year of rising oil burden -- "Were $100/bbl oil to become entrenched in 2011, that would risk pushing the [oil burden] figure through 5%," IEA said---please see my post "IEA Warns of Rising Oil Burden." The price of crude, if sustained at $100 a barrel or more for the rest of 2011, would cause similar demand destruction as the world experienced in 2008 that led to the global economic crisis, Nobuo Tanaka, IEA executive director, said---please see The Telegraph, Apr 20, 2011. Please compare the above-mentioned analysis to the IEA's official position -- The use of IEA strategic stocks "is not about price but rather about ensuring an adequately supplied market to protect the world economy from unnecessary damage when it is in a fragile state." [?]---please see IEA: Key Questions answered on the release of oil stocks or more precisely "IEA collective action – June 23, 2011: FAQ." The SPR crude oil stocks are stored in underground salt caverns along the Gulf of Mexico Coast. Currently, there are a historically high 726.6 million barrels of crude oil in SPR, close to its 727.0 million barrel capacity. Historically, releases from the SPR have taken one of two forms, either an exchange, where oil provided in the release is then repaid within a specified time, or sales, where oil is auctioned off in a competitive bidding process. The United States has released crude oil from the SPR a number of times since 1985, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. The most recent release was the 5.4 million barrel exchange following Hurricanes Gustav and Ike in September 2008. To date, the largest release was a 30 million barrel exchange in the fall of 2000 in response to low heating oil supplies in the Northeast region of the United States---please see chart below and U.S. Energy Information Administration/EIA, Today in Energy, Jun 24, 2011, here. -- D.R.)
              [Click on chart to enlarge]

 

World's Top 6 Net Oil Importers, 2008-2010 -- EIA

by David Rachovich

Top World Oil Net Importers (Million Barrels Per Day), 2008-2010*

Rank	Country	Year 2010	Year 2009	Year 2008
1.	United States	9.6	9.6	11.0
2.	China	4.8	4.3	3.9
3.	Japan	4.3	4.2	4.6
4.	Germany	2.3	2.3	2.4
5.	India	2.3	2.2	2.1
6.	South Korea	2.2	2.1	2.1

*Estimates of production and consumption. Does not include stockbuild.

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), China Country Analysis Briefs, 2009-2011 (charts).

(China's net oil imports reached about 4.3 million barrels per day in 2009, making it the second-largest net oil importer in the world behind the United States and for the first time surpassing Japan’s imports. -- D.R.)