Refineries being burdened by new fuels

by The Associated Press

Future transportation emission standards in the United States will require more low-sulfur fuels, which result in challenges for refineries, the director of the National Petroleum Technology office says.

The new clean fuels will soak up sulfur that is found in crude oil and has coated the pipelines for the past two decades, and no one knows how long it will take before all the sulfur is gone, said William F. Lawson, who heads the Department of Energy’s Tulsa technology office.

Diesel fuel uses sulfur as a lubricant, and lube oil, which has a high sulfur content, must be reformulated, Lawson said.

“I don’t know what we are going to do with all that extra sulfur,” he said May 3 at a meeting of the International Society of Energy Advocates.

Refiners are going to have to make some substantial capital improvements, and the nation is going to have to find a way to build new refineries, he said.

“There is no way around it,” Lawson said.

The number of refineries serving the nation has dropped from 300 in 1990 to 150 today. Lawson said the U.S. energy infrastructure is at its capacity for transportation fuels, the generation and transmission of electrical power and the production and transmission of natural gas.

Refinery output and distribution must be increased if the nation’s economy is going to expand, he said.

There is an aging infrastructure and it is difficult to put in a new pipeline, just as it is to install new power transmission lines and natural gas lines, Lawson said.

“Any crisis that we have just absorbs all our limited resources,” he said. “The current fuel picture for the United States is problematic, but it is certainly not dismal. We can deal with what we have.”