What percent of oil usage goes to non-fuel use?

D107

I was thinking that reducing oil fuel usage going forward would leave more oil for essential things like plastic products, asphalt etc. far into the future. I was wondering what percentage of extracted oil goes for those materials. I can't really think of any petroleum substitute for such vital products.



Thanks.

Ex Maine Doug

Energy Information

Here is a source for a good chart of supplied product.  IIRC, we in the US must be up to 8 or  9 thousand gal per second of gasoline usage.



The US Energy Information Administration site has numbers for just about every product and you can download xls files to extract info. It does take a bit of study to sort thru the data.

I always smile at the notion of reducing dependence on foreign energy. If you look at the energy sources and the value in BTU's, one may conclude that either some miracle will happen or we will reduce usage beyond what we can imagine.



[url=http://www.eia.doe.gov/]http://www.eia.doe.gov/

jpf321

i think this is what you were looking for ...

just happened to come across this today and remember that someone had asked for it .. http://www.heatingoil.com/articles/varieties-fuel-oil/

MikeT_Swampeast_MO

Crude Oil Uses

Crude oil is refined by distillation--e.g. heating to produce vapors that are later condensed.  The process has become so incredibly refined that within limits a barrel of crude can be distilled in a way that produces the most of whatever product is considered most profitable.

Ex Maine Doug

Some reported data

David, here is U.S. No. 2 Fuel Oil All Sales/Deliveries by Prime Supplier (Thousand Gallons per Day).  Looks like a reduction in use has already being going on.

What state are you in?  Let's look at sales there.

D107

Thanks for all the info

First welcome back Mike T--you were gone too long and missed here at the Wall. Very interesting report/photos from Turkey....



Yes, JPF's info is what I was most interested in. My point was that the 'other products'--plastic, asphalt etc will be vital to civilization far far into the future, so we better not use all of it up on gasoline or other combustion requirements. So it's 7% --I'm assuming that chart is for the US only.

Ex Maine Doug

Average barrel of oil

The barrel picture depicts the refined products not the stuff made from the products.  The petroleum based products refined from crude will vary with source of crude, refinery used and best or desired mix within the capability of the particular refinery. Sweet crude will give better results for some products versus the thick dirty crude from tar sands for example.



So the 7% is not the final use mix, it is the mix of refined product that does not fit in the other percentages which may be used for whose knows what. Some of this may be used for making the additives that go into fuel products.



Some of the "fuel" catagory finds itself in non fuel use. I imagine that the 7% other products may have a significant variation if the real distribution were known.



In the sales volume chart for No.2 fuel, the numbers go down over time. Does that mean that the ratio of No.2 relative to the rest of the refined products in a barrel changed with the reduction in sales?   I would think that market forces and profit very much drive this distribution.  I would like to see the barrel picture from 20 years ago. It would be interesting to see how this drives cost in the medical arena for petroleum based products.



Good question you pose - if we reduce the use of fuel oil for heating in the Northeast by some significant amount for example, where will we see the benefit.

Jean-David Beyer

'other products'

One "other product" is lubricants. Since I doubt we want to go back to beef tallow. pork fat, and whale oil for our lubricants, we better preserve some oil for them. Even most "synthetic" motor oils are made from ultimately from crude oil.

jpf321

and let's remember

remember that we can also recycle many plastics .. so even if we are out of oil, we may still be able to make plastics by recycling the ones that are being discarded. at least, in theory. regardless, without oil, the world will be a very different place indeed and not having enough juice to make plastics, will probably be the least of our worries. 

Ex Maine Doug

Gasoline Sales

Here is the gasoline sales chart. The curve is almost the opposite of the heating oil pattern.  Matches the barrel showing the single biggest use of oil is transportation. 

As India goes from 12 cars per thousand people towards the approaching 800 per thousand people in the US, the world consumption of gasoline might be a steep graph. And China is sprouting cars faster than anyone. Makes the use of heating oil look rather small.



We consider LPG as a fuel but its most important use is a feed stock for industrial chemical processes rather than BBQ's. This would add it into the other uses which I would estimate is more than double what is depicted by the barrel at 7%.



Glad my boilers will burn either oil or NG.