The U.S. is the second largest crude oil exporter in the world behind only Saudi Arabia; thru the first half of 2026 those oil exports have averaged over 5 MM BOPD. The highest ever in U.S. history.

The U.S. in the largest diesel exporter in the world by a wide margin, over 1.35 MM BPD. It's also the largest gasoline exporter in the world.

The U.S. SPR is at its lowest levels since 1982 and is still being drawn down to below lawful levels. U.S. commercial inventories, bottom chart.

Exports of crude oil, diesel and ethane, propane to China have never been higher.

My apologies for the long interlude since my last posting but I have been rather busy with the collapsing petrochemical industry in Europe, most of which is due to the high cost of feedstocks and very unfavourable governments who are placing huge burdens on businesses, such as ESG, DIE, and CSDDD legislation.

The topic of this discussion is hydroprocessing which is a generic term that covers quite a broad range of processes in the refining and petrochemical industries. My focus will be on refining and hydroprocessing that covers two main processes:

Hydrotreating - used widely for upgrading both feedstocks and finished products

Hydrocracking - used for upgrading low quality feedstocks and products, generally heavy gas oils.

This is a belated follow up to my last posting on Fluid Catalytic Cracking (FCC). My health is still a limitation and I have also have to work. In this post I will explain more on the innovations both in equipment design and catalyst technology.

Over the past 40 years FCC designs have proliferated with new innovations to increase flexibility of operation and widen the product scope.

FCC’s are primarily a gasoline machine that also produces some olefinic LPG and a rather poor quality diesel fraction. There is now significant progress being made with new FCC designs that increase feedstocks for petrochemical production, boost gasoline octane, and process poorer quality feedstocks, including atmospheric residue. New catalysts have been developed that can work in conjunction with new hardware designs, that dramatically widen the operating envelope. 

Huge leaps in catalyst technology have been made that can extend the life of the catalyst, tolerate…