complex refineries

The Trump administration announced on February 26 that it is ending Chevron’s permit to operate in oil-rich Venezuela, which will halt U.S. imports of Venezuelan crude by early April. These changes, combined with other recent developments, are likely to significantly impact complex U.S. Gulf Coast refiners relying on heavy crude. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll discuss these impacts — an issue our Refined Fuels Analytics (RFA) practice examined in its recently updated Future of Fuels report. 

The planned shift from 3.5%-sulfur marine fuel to fuel with sulfur content of 0.5% or less mandated by IMO 2020 on January 1, 2020, will require a combination of fuel-oil blending, crude-slate changes, refinery upgrades and, potentially, increased refinery runs, not to mention ship-mounted “scrubbers” for those who want to continue burning higher-sulfur bunker. That’s a lot of stars to align, and even then, there’s likely to be at least some degree of non-compliance, at least for a while. So, what’s ahead for global crude oil and bunker-fuel markets — and for refiners in the U.S. and elsewhere — in the coming months? Today, we continue our analysis of how sharply rising demand for low-sulfur marine fuel might affect crude flows, crude slates and a whole lot more.