Wasted Away in Butane Blendingville

Normal butane is an important gasoline blendstock, with a great combination of high octane and relatively low cost. It also has a high Reid vapor pressure, or RVP, which is a good news/bad news kind of thing because while regulators allow higher-RVP gasoline — that is, gasoline with higher levels of butane — to be sold during the colder months of the year, they forbid its sale during the warmer months, thereby forcing butane levels in gasoline to be kept to a minimum. As we discuss in today’s RBN blog, air-quality regulations and seasonal shifts in butane blending may add complexity to gasoline production and marketing, but they also create opportunities to increase gasoline supply and earn substantially larger profits through much of the year. 

We are rapidly approaching September 15, when summer blend motor gasoline changes over to winter blend, allowing the increased use of high vapor pressure normal butane in the blending.  However, the spread between Reformulated Blendstock for Oxygenate Blending (RBOB, the benchmark unleaded gasoline) and normal butane was down to 85 cents/gal as of the end of August, reducing the incentive to blend as much butane into motor gasoline as possible to its lowest level in recent years.  Sure, 85 cents/gal is still 85 cents.  But what impact might that smaller RBOB/normal butane spread and other market factors have on butane exports?  Today we examine the state of the gasoline blending and normal butane markets, and the effect that current dynamics –– a gasoline glut and strong butane prices among them –– ­­may have.

Alkylate is a valuable blending component that accounts for about 12 percent of the US gasoline pool. Alkylate is manufactured by combining elements derived from NGLs and crude oil refining and is an important link between these two hydrocarbon markets. Alkylate has critical qualities required to meet complex modern gasoline quality specifications. Today we look at the qualities and manufacture of alkylate.