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Strategies & Market Trends : The Epic American Credit and Bond Bubble Laboratory -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (14505)	5/26/2004 2:34:08 PM
From: Elroy Jetson	Respond to of 110194

Each refinery is designed to handle only a certain range of crude oil. Most processing units in a refinery require a cold shut-down for rebuilding - once every 18 months is typical. During this 3 to 6 week shut-down, the refining process can be changed out with a different catalysts, additional equipment, or a larger capacity. An interruption in the crude stock a refinery is designed to handle would be a huge financial hit if this did not occur during a routine maintenance schedule. It's hard to imagine a refinery which would not have firm contracts for their entire run-time until the next scheduled maintenance. Some crude types, sour crudes which contain high sulfur content and heavy crudes with a high level of residuum, require such a different refining process that a purpose built refinery is required. Building the required processing equipment for these crude types would take at least 18 months and require significant new acreage.