Energy Transition accelerated in EU and USA by Covid-19 resulting in peak Mogas demand, other regions to keep oil demand growing for some time In this month’s economic engineering update, we zoom out for a look at the global supply and demand environment for oil,...

US Refiners See High Crack Spreads, but Renewable Fuel Credits Eat into Actual Profits Recently we have seen some buzz about refining crack spreads being at favorable levels. While this appears to be true on the surface, a key component of understanding actual...

Fuels demand projected to increase, although less than 2019 The US Government’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) released their take on how gasoline and diesel demand might recover in their Short Term Energy Outlook (STEO) this week. The forecast shows that...

Vaxications, a Texas Deep Freeze, and Summer Driving Season – finally a booster shot for refining margins? Last time I wrote (January of this year) we were in the midst of the second wave of Covid-19 in many places around the world and things were not looking so great...

With higher refined product prices, conversion margins improve Despite a new and more severe wave of Covid-19 and its restrictions, product prices and demand have been surprisingly resilient. We have seen diesel and gasoline cracks hold up nicely over the last few...

Distillate production back in favor, but will it reverse again before the winter is over? As you may recall, I wrote about distillate pricing relative to gasoline (a large determinant of refining operating strategy) a couple months back. At that time, we had finally...

Most complex facilities such as refineries and chemical plants utilize some type of Linear Programming (LP) software to optimize and help plan for feedstocks, unit conditions, and even future investments. These models generally optimize a system of linear equations...