This is a email that I receieved from a person that I know very well. He retired from Amoco a few years ago. He was Vice President of Amoco pipeline before being sent to the Amoco refinery at Mandan So Dakoda where he was the plant mgr. He then went to the refinery at Whiting, IN as plant mgr.<br /><br />I asked him the question about blending gasoline at the pump as some have suggested. Below is his reply:<br /><br />Hi Darryl. Due to EPA regs, ie specific volatility and octane specs, requires blending at the refineries where it can periodically checked by government inspectors. For instance, at Whiting we had 44 specific different blends depending on where it was going. Milwaukee had one spec, Chicago another different than Cook County I might add, Detroit another.....as towns and counties "opped out" of various mandates. From the days of just 3 grades (still blended in the refinery )we had 44 that had to fit into our same inventory of tanks. What that meant is that we couldn't hold of a particular grade as we used to. For example, Chicago could not Cook County's blend. Then of course there was grades of Jet fuel for O'Hare that was different than government jet. The days of the blending Sunoco pumps are long gone. One other thing of interest is that the marketing stations inventory are now beamed via satellite and trucks are sent out "just in time" to (hopefully) prevent runouts. Some thing that was relatively simple is an absolute logistical marvel. As your finding out...the public doesn't have a clue as to what it takes to get gasoline to market. I even herd O'Rielly last nite make a dumb *** statement...as he thought the full 42 gallon barrel of crude oil could be made into gasoline.....we'll only the big sophisticated plants can approach 75 to 80% but most of the little refineries can only convert around 65% to gasoline.....the rest is propane, butane, kerosene, diesel, lube stocks, asphalt and pet coke. @ 42g/bx75%=31.50gal of gasoline in a barrel of crude oil. @$70/31.5gal=$2.22 just for the raw material, add 60+-(Chicago) cents for road tax one is already up to $2.82/gal. On top of that add about 15 cents to refine it( wages+energy), 20 cents to transport it and market it....and already we've got $3.17. The guy making the money is the crude oil producer, ie the Saudi's et al....as it costs typically $4.00 to bring the crude out of the ground.....BUT, that's not counting the cost to build these big drilling rigs, for example the big BP rig called "Thunderhorse" cost ONE BILLION dollars....and the dam thing almost sunk during the last hurricane. Hope this helps....>>>>>>>>>>>Dan
