Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

He doesn't pay much attention because he's unable to follow the discussion, at all.  So, he just makes broad silly proclamations about whatever he feels like, with no substance or contribution to any discussion.

Hey now. At least I found out I'm a dickhead.

US oil production is nearing record levels now.  With Canada and Mexico, we're continent independent and then some.

I don't know that it would make much difference.  It would help our trade balance some.  We're at 12,696 thousand BPD in March 2023.  The record is 13,000.  There was a six month period before COVID hit that was a bit higher.  Usage is about 18.7 million BPD, which to me is an astounding figure.

Global oil usage is just over 100.

There are seasonal shifts in refining, in winter, they make more heating oil and the gasoline is more volatile than in summer.  I don't think this has a material impact on output except they often shut down for a few days to make the shfts.  They still use "high" sulfur Diesel in Europe as opposed to the US, that is a factor for them in keeping Diesel cheaper than gasoline.  In the US, that sulfur has to be largely removed from Diesel.

Petroleum comes in several grades, anything called "sweet" is low sulfur, and "sour" is high sulfur (which is cheaper).  Petroleum is a complex mixture of hydrocarbons ranging from methane with one carbon which is in effect natural gas to very high chainlength hydrocarbons used in things like asphalt.

The first step in refining is to separate these by volatility, my oil company friends would talk about their "C4 stream" for example, which was mostly butane.  Gasoline is mostly C8, which is called "octane" but isn't the same thing as the octane rating.  Higher octane is achieved in part by branching, straight chained hydrocarbons have very low octane (but high cetane for Diesel).  So another step is to rearrange straight chains to get branched chains for octane rating.  And there are additives that make higher octane, one is ethanol.  Premium gas can contain more ethanol as a cheap way to increase octane, but it lowers fuel economy (and power).  Tetraethyl lead was for decades the cheap way to add octane rating.

In winter, gasoline has more C7 and C6 in it for volatility, in summer, less of that, and some C9 C10.  This was more important with carburetors.

The process for what?  The first step is distillation.  A second step can be cracking, which is changing long chainlength molecules to shorter ones, and more branched ones, this uses heat and catalysts.  Sulfur removal, I don't know how they do it, sulfur tends to poison catalysts.