Trends, Cycles, and Kinks


SThe prior industry slide masks some extraordinary refinery operations. Individual refiners accomplished some very large yield shifts away from gasoline and into distillate simply through operating changes. This chart shows the average yield shift for individual refineries in PADDs 1, 2, 3 and 5 for May to August in 2008, compared to the same months in 2007. The table only shows refineries that did not have any major unit outages during those months in both years, although in a few cases, the change is based on only 3 months.
SThe most important observation was that yield shifts were across a wide range of refineries. We explored various refining dimensions to see if certain refinery variables favored yield shifts more than others. Differences were modest. The shifts occurred:
	–In refineries operated by all companies,
	–In all regions of the country
		The largest shift was in PADD 3 which showed distillate yield up +5.0 percentage points , and gasoline down -3.5.
	–In refineries of all complexity
		The yield shift for less complex refineries (FCC only) averaged +3.1 percentage points of distillate and –2.0 of gasoline, compared to +5.3 percentage points of distillate and –4.6% of gasoline for FCC plus coking refineries, and +4.7distillate, -3.2% gasoline for refineries with FCC, coking, and hydrocracking.
	–In refineries running from light to heavy crude oil,
		The greatest shift occurred for refineries running intermediate gravity crude oil (32-35°API)
	–In refineries with different starting gasoline-to-distillate ratios
		The distillate yield increase was slightly greater for refiners with higher initial gasoline/distillate production ratios.