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Jeremycycles t1_isxniud wrote

Reply to comment by johnnyringo117 in Biden to release 15M barrels from oil reserve, more possible by cacarca

The issue is that we can't refine enough domestic oil to keep up with capacity

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JohnnyUtah_QB1 t1_isxygpm wrote

We can, it's just more lucrative to sell it. A lot of US domestic oil is relatively lighter sweet crude, the kind of crude that is easy to refine. That means it's very in demand on global markets as that's the kind of crude most countries have the technology and infrastructure to handle.

So we sell that stuff off by the boatload, and in return we bring in heavy sour crude. Why? Because it's a pain in the ass to refine, and we're one of the few countries on earth with the infrastructure to do it. Since most other places can't handle it we get it for very cheap, cheap enough that the excess refining cost isn't an issue.

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Jeremycycles t1_isy0ebl wrote

We literally don’t have the refineries in place for light sweet crude oil. You can’t just change the plants to refine a different type. So no we don’t have the capacity to refine the crude oil from the United States.

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