Not used to forums so don’t know how to highlight a comment from someone or reply direct.
John Harris
“Volkswagen knew what the implications of transferring production to China meant, I was involved in the early negotiations and feasibility study and implementation plan for Total to open up petrol service stations in China and what self serving conditions China placed upon them”.
Just found this interesting from a personal perspective as spent 15 years in the oil/petrol industry in several roles including buying petrol stations. Until the ‘wholesale’ closure of stations over recent years & the joy of sat nav I used to direct people by petrol stations - left at the Regent Morgan garage, right at Gulf, straight on at Fina, bear left at Heron and at the junction where the Elf garage is etc etc - None of these brands left and so few sites these days I have given that method up …….God help us if we ever have a petrol shortage again .Do we have enough refinery capacity to be self sufficient even with North Sea swaps Thankfully we have EVs ! MM
PS I always fully fill up and rarely go below a third of a tank, just a state of mind.
Mike,
Its been a while since I was in the industry, some 20 years now. As you probably know not all oil is the same, eg oil from Venezuela has different properties to Saudi oil and therefore when refracted will meet different needs and then again when it comes to the refraction process it, they can manipulate the refraction (to a certain degree) as to what products they want at the time, eg diesel. petrol, engineering oils, light oils , heavy oils, bitumen and so on. I had to look this up but clearly our refining capability is diminishing in the UK.
Petroleum refining in the United Kingdom produced around 51.45 million tonnes of petroleum products in 2023, down 16% from 2015 and 32% from 2011. There are six major and one minor petroleum refinery in the downstream sector of the UK oil industry. In 2022, petroleum products consumed by transportation in the United Kingdom amounted to 43.2 million metric tons.
Phillips 66, Humber Refinery, South Killingholme, 221,000 barrels per day
Prax, Lindsey Oil Refinery, North Killingholme, 111,300 barrels per day
Petroineos, Grangemouth refinery, 150,000 barrels per day
Essar Energy plc., Stanlow refinery, 190,000 barrels per day
Valero Energy Corp., Pembroke refinery, 270,000 barrels per day
ExxonMobil, Fawley refinery, 270,000 barrels per day
Haltermann Carless,[10] Harwich refinery, 0.5 million tonnes per year (10,500 barrels per day)
Total, operational refining capacity 1,222,800 barrels per day, around 58 million tonnes per year.
Within the OECD, three of the five net exporters of crude oil were the same as the previous year: Canada, Norway, and Mexico. This year the UK joins these four countries by exporting 1.2 per cent more than demand, as does Columbia who joined the OECD in 2020. Other OECD countries met their demand at least partially through imports, with ten countries not producing any crude oil indigenously.
Eighteen of the OECD countries - including the UK - could meet their petrol demand through indigenous production, four more than last year, with much of Western Europe being net exporters. Subsequently petrol also achieved the highest average diversity index and achieving the highest average security of supply score. Twelve of the OECD countries were self-sufficient in kerosene production. The self-sufficiency average continues to be greatly increased by the high contributions from Lithuania (meeting 14 times demand).
Fourteen of the OECD countries were self-sufficient in diesel production; Greece, Korea, the Netherlands, and Finland remaining in the top four, the same as in 2018 and 2019. Greece remained the most self-sufficient OECD country for diesel, producing over three times the amount consumed
Hope this helps