Introduction
Every barrel of crude oil holds remarkable potential: to keep us warm, to keep us on the go and to provide the building blocks for countless products we depend on every day.
The job of the refinery is to unleash that potential by sorting and improving the hydrocarbons within the crude. Gasoline, propane, jet fuel, heating oil and petrochemicals are just some of the specially formulated products leaving the refinery.
Technicians in a central control room can fine-tune refinery operations to produce the desired mix of products. For example, the same barrel of crude can be processed to yield more heating oil in winter or gasoline in summer driving season. Within the refining system, nothing is wasted and the byproducts from one process often are integral to another.
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