A duo of strong storms that swept through the United States has temporarily disrupted domestic fuel markets, but effective responses by the private and public sectors have limited the fallout from Hurricanes Harvey and Irma for Americans who need fuel critical for commerce.
The waiver to the Jones Act provided by the Department of Homeland Security is already proving helpful in the wake of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, both of which affected important energy infrastructure...
In 2015, after years of building a collection of over 600 pipeline real-world “test specimens” to be used for advanced pipeline safety research, the Pipeline Research Council International (PRCI) opened the Technology Development Center (TDC) in Houston, Texas.
As Hurricane Florence approaches the East Coast, Carolina communities are preparing for the Category 3 storm to make landfall – while nearly two million residents are under warning to evacuate.
As Hurricane Florence approached the East Coast this week, nearly two million residents throughout the Carolinas, Maryland and Virginia were placed under evacuation watch.
Governor Gavin Newsom continues to blame fuel refiners for California’s highest-in-the-nation fuel prices. He couldn't be more wrong. The problem and solution to much of California’s fuel price challenge can be found in Sacramento policy. Take a look to better understand the role of policy in regional price differences, why it’s inaccurate to equate “margins” or “refinery cracks” with “profits,” and why windfall profit taxes are a known policy failure.
Some policymakers are rumored to be considering a ban on crude oil and/or U.S. refined product exports. This would be a mistake. Ending U.S. crude oil or refined product exports won’t help U.S. consumers by lowering prices at pump. In fact, it could make things even worse. Let’s take a closer look at how a refined product export ban would affect gasoline and diesel supplies and, thus, prices in the United States and around the world.
Refinery utilization, measures how much crude oil refineries are processing or “running” as a percentage of their maximum capacity. It tells us roughly how much of our refining muscle is being put to work manufacturing fuel. American refineries are running full-out, at about 95% of total capacity, contributing more fuel—gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, etc.—to the global market than any other country. In fact, U.S. refineries process more crude oil every day than the United States produces, and we make more finished fuels than the United States consumes.