Review article
700 Refineries Supply Oil Products to the World
Ivica Billege
Abstract
There are about 700 oil refineries all over the world today, but - like oil - they are not equally distributed in all parts of the world. Their representation by location is greatly determined by several crucial factors; vicinity of oil sources, vicinity of intense oil products consumption or population density, vicinity of oil transportation routes, economic potential for refinery construction, etc. In turn, refineries mutually differ by type and complexity of oil refining technologies (refinery complexity), installed and utilized oil refining capacity, and more recently by technological potential for obtaining highly purified oil products and highly treated refinery emissions.
In addition to the global and regional survey of locations and refinery numbers, the paper covers their main characteristics in the period from 1996 onwards, bringing to the fore general trends of changes and global tendencies of such changes in this branch of industry.
Although availability of data on existing refineries is not simple and equal for all parts of the world, thanks to the efforts invested in data acquisition they provide a picture of global situation and balance for this industry and illustrate its changes and trends. Comparison of individual characteristic refineries with average or extreme ones in the world or in the region also becomes possible.
Keywords
number of refineries; installed refinery capacity; utilized refinery capacity; conversion refinery capacity; refinery complexity
Hrčak ID:
41418
URI
Publication date:
31.8.2009.
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