by Matthew J Stephens, Economic Engineering Manager | Jan 14, 2021
With higher refined product prices, conversion margins improve Despite a new and more severe wave of Covid-19 and its restrictions, product prices and demand have been surprisingly resilient. We have seen diesel and gasoline cracks hold up nicely over the last few...
by Matthew J Stephens, Economic Engineering Manager | Dec 9, 2020
Distillate production back in favor, but will it reverse again before the winter is over? As you may recall, I wrote about distillate pricing relative to gasoline (a large determinant of refining operating strategy) a couple months back. At that time, we had finally...
by Matthew J Stephens, Economic Engineering Manager | Nov 6, 2020
Second wave of COVID increases risk for already challenged refiners Over the last several weeks, we have once again seen COVID-19 cases in the US (and globally) rise significantly. In the initial stages of the outbreak the primary tool that governments had to address...
by Matthew J Stephens, Economic Engineering Manager | Oct 19, 2020
Most complex facilities such as refineries and chemical plants utilize some type of Linear Programming (LP) software to optimize and help plan for feedstocks, unit conditions, and even future investments. These models generally optimize a system of linear equations...
by Matthew J Stephens, Economic Engineering Manager | Oct 6, 2020
US Distillates Market begins to feel the pinch Since the pandemic started and we saw Jet demand drop to levels unseen in many years, I have postulated that distillates will go long in a significant and difficult to deal with way in the US. This is due to the need to...
by Kevin Clarke, Hydrocarbons Chief Revenue Officer | Sep 28, 2020
The recent COVID-19 outbreak caused a major disruption to peoples’ movements around the world, resulting in a very sharp curtailment of international air travel. Demand for jet fuel, normally a high value refined product and one of the easiest products to sell, was...
