Model to Investigate Energy and Greenhouse Gas Emissions Implications of Refining Petroleum: Impacts of Crude Quality and Refinery Configuration

Abstract

A petroleum refinery model, Petroleum Refinery Life-cycle Inventory Model (PRELIM), which quantifies energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions with the detail and transparency sufficient to inform policy analysis is developed. PRELIM improves on prior models by representing a more comprehensive range of crude oil quality and refinery configuration, using publicly available information, and supported by refinery operating data and experts' input. The potential use of PRELIM is demonstrated through a scenario analysis to explore the implications of processing crudes of different qualities, with a focus on oil sands products, in different refinery configurations. The variability in GHG emissions estimates resulting from all cases considered in the model application shows differences of up to 14 g CO₂eq/MJ of crude, or up to 11 g CO₂eq/MJ of gasoline and 19 g CO₂eq/MJ of diesel (the margin of deviation in the emissions estimates is roughly 10%). This variability is comparable to the magnitude of upstream emissions and therefore has implications for both policy and mitigation of GHG emissions.

Life cycle greenhouse gas emissions and freshwater consumption associated with Bakken tight oil

“…We used the PRELIM to estimate the GHG emissions and product slates associated with the refining of Bakken crude (9,10). PRELIM is a mass and energy based process unit-level tool that permits estimation of energy use and GHG emissions associated with processing of specific crude oils within a range of configurations in a refinery.…”

“…Our LCA also uses production data from XTO Energy and more than 60 other Bakken operators in North Dakota. It also includes an inventory for the refining of Bakken crude, constructed from the open source Petroleum Refinery Life Cycle Inventory Model (PRELIM) to estimate refinery GHG emissions (9,10), as well as ExxonMobil data for refinery freshwater consumption. We provide these inventories among other supporting data in SI Appendix, sections 2-4.…”

Lifting the US Crude Oil Export Ban: A Numerical Partial-Equilibrium Analysis

“…In addition, the yearly published "World Oil and Gas Review" by ENI (2014) gives a good overview on the available global crude oil qualities and their production shares. One simplified but common way is to distinguish between light and heavy crude (by API gravity) on the one hand, and sweet and sour crude (by sulfur content) on the other hand (see for example Hackett et al 2013;Avis and Birch 2009;Abella and Bergerson 2012a).…”

“…Heavy crude oil needs advanced refineries, mostly providing large additions of hydrogen, to produce high-demand products. Yet, it still yields a lower share of valuable products than sweet crude (API, 2014;Abella and Bergerson, 2012a).That is why heavy crude oils trade at a discount of 20-50% compared to e.g. the sweet WTI benchmark (Kilian, 2015).…”

“…The refinery configurations are chosen in line with Abella and Bergerson (2012a) and are also used by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in their Oil Climate Index (2015). Abella and Bergerson (2012b) also discuss in more depth the technical structure of the refinery configurations and the used technical units, as well as the flows across the different entities in the refining process. All crude oils can, in principle, be transformed in all refinery configurations.…”