RunninLean

actually re get close to 50% of mexico's product as payment for our loans to them.

Rednecktastic

Driving by the refineries in my area (SE Texas, I can look out my window at work and see BP) reminds me of looking at pictures of old ship docks from the defunked soviet union... If anyone can picture that.


I'm about to move out of finance work into Industrial Supplies because I think I'll make some bank in the near future. This stuff needs to be all rebuilt. Seems like they are blowing up every day. Big clouds of smoke all around here several times a week.

Busboy

SAN RAMON, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Chevron Corporation (NYSE:CVX - News) said today it plans to build a pre-commercial plant at its refinery in Pascagoula, Miss., to test the technical and economic viability of a breakthrough heavy-oil upgrading technology. This proprietary technology, called Vacuum Resid Slurry Hydrocracking (VRSH), has the potential to significantly increase yields of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel from heavy and ultra-heavy crude oils and could be used to increase and upgrade production of heavy oil resources.

“This project will advance Chevron’s heavy-oil upgrading capability and is an important research and development initiative for the company,” said Mike Wirth, executive vice president of Global Downstream for Chevron. “Given the increasing role of heavy oil in meeting the world’s growing energy demand and our significant heavy oil resources, this technology could provide a unique pathway to increase supplies of clean-burning fuels for the marketplace.”

The Pascagoula pre-commercial plant will have a capacity of 3,500 barrels per day. All necessary permits have been secured, and construction is expected to begin later this year.

Chevron has been actively developing VRSH technology since 2003. The patented process has undergone successful preliminary testing on a wide range of feedstocks in multiple pilot plants at Chevron’s research center in Richmond, Calif. Chevron’s research shows the technology can achieve up to 100 percent conversion of the heaviest feedstock, while the best current commercial refining technology achieves less than 80 percent conversion.

John McDonald, vice president and chief technology officer for Chevron, said, “The development of VRSH technology further strengthens Chevron’s capability to convert heavy oil resources into high-value fuels, providing an integrated solution that will benefit both upstream and downstream businesses. VRSH is a milestone in Chevron’s commitment to develop new technologies that will expand and diversify energy supplies to help meet the rapid growth in global energy demand.”

The Pascagoula Refinery, Chevron’s largest wholly owned petroleum refinery, has been operating in Mississippi for over 40 years. “We have the experience and expertise to construct and operate the pre-commercial plant in a safe and environmentally responsible manner and are extremely pleased to play an important role in advancing this promising new technology,” said Roland Kell, general manager of the Pascagoula Refinery.

Chevron Corporation is one of the world’s leading integrated energy companies, with subsidiaries that conduct business across the globe. The company’s success is driven by the ingenuity and commitment of approximately 59,000 employees who operate across the energy spectrum. Chevron explores for, produces and transports crude oil and natural gas; refines, markets and distributes transportation fuels and other energy products; manufactures and sells petrochemical products; generates power and produces geothermal energy; provides energy efficiency solutions; and develops and commercializes the energy resources of the future, including biofuels and other renewables. Chevron is based in San Ramon, Calif. More information about Chevron is available at www.chevron.com.

dodgecbr600rr

Even if there was a hundred new refineries built tomorrow. I think the oil companies would come up with another way to keep the prices high. And why would they want to build a lot of new refinery capacity when oil is over 100 dollars a barrel. They are making huge profits at this price.

truckjunkie

Give Mr. Coleman a cigar - he's hit the nail on the head - our currency (value) stinks when compared to other international currencies at this time. In other words - a Euro buys a LOT more oil than the American dollar currently...

carpenterje

Do a google search on this.

http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline...hief-comp.html

jthorpe

After discussion among the administrators, we've decided to open the thread back up for now. The second one was getting too political and it will remain closed.

A couple of reminders:

1. Be civil
2. No politics.
3. No insults.

krazykiller

kurt,
quick question how do you figure that a nuke is cheaper to run.the only thing that is cheap for a nuke is the people working there.even to do a refuel for the plant is millions of dollars and 1-6 months to do it.then the cost to store the rods or send them to a mountain top to be stored.

as for me i am a control room operator at a combined cycle plant were yes we run on natural gas but we don't have the major expenses refueling,storing,and paying all the labor cost to do that.we can do a Major overhaul in 1-2 weeks and be done and running in a couple of hours after the overhaul.nuke 1-5 day start up or longer depends of start up curve.
nukes are bad thats why you wont see more being built but you do see combined cycle plants being built.
there are many other factors of cost between the plant but just to give a example of costs i guess.


krazykiller

MAX340

Nukes are not "bad". PPL has a plant at Bell Bend PA, close to Berwick. They have done refueling in one month. They regularly look at plant capacity and demand, and apply to NRC for uprate certification.

And yes, they have applied for, and are in process of getting NRC approval for a third reactor on site.

I don't know the costs involved, but I do know that nuclear power is a very viable energy source. Correctly managed (such as the plant at Berwick) a nuke plant can be very cost effective and very safe.

PPL, until the 2009 deregulation, will have had the lowest rates of almost any electric utility in the nation. I know they are far lower than the nearest big competitor, PECO.

The clearest reason no nuclear plants have been built in the past two decades is Three Mile Island. Prior to that, they were the best form of electrical generation available. TMI has been studied and evaluated, and the reasons for the incident are known. If they were that unavoidable, all nuke plants would have been shut down.

archer39

And the weakness of the US dollar has to do with the rapid growth of third world counties (China and India to name a few). These counties are becoming much more advanced and in turn demanding lot more than in the past. It all comes down to the allocation of scarce natural resources. The world is growing and there is only so much we can produce. The scary part about it is the size of there populations. They are HUGE. They are becoming very dependent on petroleum much like us. This is leading to much more demand and contributing to raising price of petroleum.

chipmonk

i know it's a bad word, but france gets most of it's power from very modern, very safe, nuclear power plants. the have so much, that they recoup much of the expense of running the plants, by exporting their extra power to germany. the woman who heads their nuclear program, has been flown over to the u.s. many times, to share info with us, and she has said that the u.s. is spending billions of $$$ on green energy programs that are very expensive, and very unreliable. she said that it seems that americans think that they will be able to plug into trees to get clean energy, but in reality there are not a lot of cost effective ways to generate clean energy, so france made the decision to build state of the art nuclear plants, and it has worked out better than anyone could have ever imagined.

CATCRACKER2

i just dont want to hear our reserves are running short if we have so much oil that they are having to rent super tankers to just sit in the gulf (ships are made to move material not to be used as storage) whats cheaper, build more tanks or rent super tankers to sit and hold the stuff? common sense should prevail on this one. also just recently an oil company who was buying up all of the propane companies with the intent to fix the price. they got caught saying this almost verbatum. they are fixing the price of oil. IMO

the best way to keep people from thinking you are conspiring is to call them wack jobs. it has work for the international bankers for years.

pronstar

True enough.
In the US each plant is basically a one-off, which makes them very expensive to build.

In France, they have basically three main types of plants, so you get economies of scale when building numerous plants that are virtual carbon-copies of one another.

pronstar

A) Oil is traded on the commodities market...and that's not how commodity markets work.
B) Speculators ARE the market for oil futures.

chipmonk

i would think that if and when we make the decision to go with nuclear power, we would do the same and construct numerous, similar plants in several locations.