Oil Refining
Refinery economics depend not only on crude quality but equally on refinery configuration, processing complexity, and regional operating context. Identical crude oils can exhibit materially different economic outcomes when processed through different refinery configurations.
In this area, the analytical emphasis is on evaluating the relative affinity of a given crude oil across multiple standard refinery configurations, representative of major refining regions.
The methodology considers:
Configuration-specific processing units
Conversion severity and flexibility
Product slate implications under regional demand structures
A stylised optimisation framework is used to compare how a selected crude performs across different standard refinery types, enabling consistent, like-for-like assessment.
Standardised refinery configurations are used for illustration, with capacities and structures reflecting common regional archetypes. The objective is to demonstrate how configuration, rather than crude quality alone, drives economic outcomes.
Where required, the framework can be adapted to reflect site-specific refinery layouts and capacities using client-provided data.
Illustrative explorations
Selected analytical explorations may be added over time to illustrate the application of this framework under representative assumptions.