ADVANCED CRUDE QUALITY MONITORING

Crude it typically bought and sold on the basis of API gravity and Sulfur content - but this only tells a tiny fraction of the story.  If you aren't monitoring the distillation data on each crude purchase, the crude seller can easily dump undesirable crudes and/or butane into your batch and still meet the API/Sulfur specs. RefineryU can help you set up a robust Crude Quality Monitoring program so you get what you paid for

• Crude sampling - set up the sample location, equipment and procedures so that you get a representative sample
• Distillation method - ask for the proper distillation method so that you accurately characterize the entire sample
• Find the right lab or equipment - assistance to evaluate commercial labs or choose the right lab equipment and training for your own lab
• Analyze the results - how to set up commercial software such as HCAMS or just Excel to determine how current batch is different than the LP Assay and what it's worth
• Negotiate with your crude seller - how to work with your crude seller to get the best quality

Crude Evaluation via LP Monte Carlo simulation

• Crude is by far the greatest cost in a refinery
• At $82/bbl Crude costs $3 Billion/yr per 100 MBPD so a 1% improvement is worth $30 Million/yr
• Most crude selection processes were created to match computers 1000x slower than today
• Few crudes are considered
• Few scenarios, if any, are considered
• It takes months from the point of the crude buying decision for the crude to be transported, refined, distributed and finally sold
• Today's prices and differentials upon which the crude buying decision is based will not be the same when the crude value is finally realized
• So how can you possibly know that you picked the right crudes?​

• What if you could consider 100, 500 or 1000+ crudes?
• What if you could look at 6000 scenarios?
• Light/Heavy diff, Sweet/Sour diff, gasoline/diesel diff, typical seasonal price movement, potential hurricane disruptions, unit slowdowns.....and all the permutations
• Today's computer hardware can handle all of this
• If you don't want to own "big iron" then you can easily rent space in the cloud via AWS, Azure, etc....
• ​Crude selection becomes a risk analysis process and conversation instead of pretending there is one right answer
  
• ​​Choosing crudes appear to have less margin, but have a greater probability of actually realizing that margin is a better decision in the long term