Improve Crude Selection by Better Understanding Crude Quality

摘要

Crude oil qualities have a major impact on transportability of the crude oil, compatibility with refineryrnprocesses and suitability of distillation products for their respective end uses. The price of crude oilsrnmay vary by over 20% depending on such qualities. The value of an individual crude oil will also varyrnbetween refineries depending on each refinery's configuration and supply and demand constraints.rnA common practice in the crude selection process for refiners is to use data from laboratory crudernassays in planning models and to update common assays once every year or two. Crude oil qualities,rneven within a single grade of crude, vary over time. These qualities not only differ between oil fields,rnbut also vary from cargo to cargo for a single traded crude oil. Often, the crude oil received in arnrefinery is a blend of several crude oils in unknown proportions.rnThe result is that the refiner may not have a good measure of the quality of the crude oil when usingrna crude assay that is even as recent as one or two years old.rnThis paper demonstrates that using static crude assays leaves too much margin on the table.rnOptimal crude selection and processing decisions require the refiner to take account of the changingrnquality of crude oil. By employing advanced statistical techniques and models for predicting crude oilrnqualities, refiners can better understand the changing quality of crude oil and speedily generaterncomprehensive, updated assays even from limited current quality data.rnTraders and refiners can gain a market advantage by utilizing these capabilities.