Guest Conversation - Petroleum Pat Talks About the Petroleum Industry!

What's the Alternative?

If you have any feedback or suggestions, please feel free to find me on Twitter @archduketyler

This is the first episode of its type, so I would love feedback on whether I hit a good balance of technical and comprehensible. Is this episode too long? Is it too unstructured? Any feedback would be appreciated!

Please forgive the slightly worse audio quality of this episode. It was recorded on the road at the tail end of my Chicago vacation and Petroleum Pat was gracious enough to allow me to record in his home, which is not prepared for such things.

CORRECTION: I inserted a correction into the episode about a stat I got wrong towards the end, so here is a link to some data that supports my correction. I also mentioned that freight is 20% of the mileage driven, which is also incorrect in the same way, but the qualitative discussion still stands.

This conversation was totally unscripted with loose notes about topics we wanted to discuss, but this was the first time I learned about basically everything we discussed. I learned an absolutely incredible amount from this conversation and I sincerely hope that you all enjoy it as much as I did!

I also want to mention that we mentioned Shell's recently changed plans regarding their product portfolio, but we never quite touched on the subject enough. The long and short of it is that they're moving away from a lot of the direct petroleum production side of things for various reasons. Our conversation went in other directions and it didn't feel natural to jump back into it more (on top of the fact we had already been chatting for over two hours!). Maybe this is a topic that will come up in a future episode.

Because this was a free-flowing conversation, we did use some industry jargon and technical terms on occasion. While I think we pretty well defined everything discussed as we used the technical terms, I want to provide the below glossary of terms and acronyms for your convenience. I hope this helps!

Glossary:

• Hydrocarbon - general term for molecules consisting of a chain of carbon atoms with hydrogen atoms attached
• Coke - essentially pure carbon, made by heating petroleum products in the absence of oxygen in a process called coking
• Bottoms - the heavier hydrocarbons left behind in the fractionation/distillation process
• ATB - atmospheric bottoms; the heavy hydrocarbons left behind in the fractionation/distillation process performed at atmospheric pressure (as opposed to bottoms left behind during fractionation under vacuum)
• Bunker fuel - very heavy, long-chain hydrocarbon petroleum product, often made of the "bottoms" from distillation and used in marine ships
• LPG - Liquified Petroleum Gas; this is what we usually call propane, but is actually a mixture of propane, butane, and other light hydrocarbons
• Ethane - a short hydrocarbon composed of two carbon atoms and six hydrogen atoms; C2H6
• Propane - a short hydrocarbon composed of three carbon atoms and eight hydrogen atoms; C3H8
• Butane - a short hydrocarbon composed of four carbon atoms and ten hydrogen atoms; C4H10
• Naphptha - a petroleum product with medium-length hydrocarbon chains (between about 5 and 10 carbons long), in this conversation it is mostly interchangeable with gasoline
• Gasoline - basically naphtha, but with specific required octane numbers that meet fuel standards
• Octane Number - a standard metric that essentially measures the temperature required to ignite gasoline, higher number corresponds to higher ignition temperature
• Diesel - fuel made from longer chain hydrocarbons (between around 12 and 18 carbons) that meet cetane number fuel standards
• Cetane Number - a standard metric that essentially measures the temperature required to ignite diesel, higher number corresponds to higher ignition temperature
• City Gas - Natural Gas, provided by municipal or city gas lines
• Natural Gas - a fuel that is primarily composed of methane (upwards of 90%), may also contain small amounts of propane, butane, hydrogen, and other fuels
• Methane - a molecule consisting of one carbon atom and four hydrogen atoms; CH4; a potent greenhouse gas (~25x worse than CO2)
• Odorant - usually ethyl mercaptan, a sulphur compound used to odorize natural gas and propane
• Distillation - a process wherein a feedstock is heated up to the point that you can separate the components based on their boiling point
• Hydrocracker - a unit used to "crack" longer hydrocarbon chains into shorter hydrocarbons; this process allows a refinery to turn "bottoms" from distillation into basically any other shorter hydrocarbon they need
• Vacuum gas oil - long chain hydrocarbons used in hydrocrackers to make smaller hydrocarbons
• Batch process - a process that is not continuous at the refinery, as opposed to most processes which are continuous and products constantly flow
• H2S - a sulphur compound consisting of two hydrogen atoms and one sulphur compound; naturally occurring in petroleum and removed to prevent SOx emissions
• SOx - a sulphur compound produced by combustion with sulphur present; a criteria pollutant under the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS); produces acid rain and is bad for lung health
• NOx - oxides of nitrogen; a criteria pollutant under NAAQS and a precursor to ozone, which is bad for lung health; produced during combustion, especially at higher temperatures
• CO - carbon monoxide; a criteria pollutant under NAAQS, also bad for lung health; produced during combustion of hydrocarbon fuels
• RVP - Reid Vapor Pressure; a measure of the volatility of gasoline; this quality can be changed to account for environmental and performance factors and is specifically changed for summer and winter blends of gasoline (winter blends will use a higher RVP blend which aids with ignition)

Relevant Links:

Gasoline Reid Vapor Pressure | US EPA

NAAQS Table | US EPA

Americans Have No Idea How Much Fuel Idling Uses - YouTube