Fuel types refined from crude oil

What is the split of different fuels refined from crude oil? Several readers

Different fuel types are not “made” from crude oil. They already exist in it and are “extracted” from it. The proportions of each fuel type available from crude varies...because crude oil itself does.  

The basic refinery process takes what it can get; more sophisticated refinery techniques can vary the proportions slightly more, to get a better balance with demand for each type. 

Essentially, crude oil is a mixture of many different hydrocarbons, ranging from extremely volatile substances as light as gas to viscous and gummy particulate solids.

In simple terms, refining separates them one by one, starting with what is known as the “tops” which give us things like LPG gas, then the “gasoline” elements like petrol, then a category known as “distillates” like diesel (also called gasoil) and kerosene (also known as paraffin), then fuel oil (principally for shipping and industry) and onward to “lubricants” (oils of various weights and character), and finally “residues” like bitumen (what we call tar) which are virtually solids (though relatively unstable as they readily melt at well below furnace temperatures).

Because we cannot get any proportion of a particular fuel we want from crude, there are all sorts of economic/policy measures to try and balance supply and demand for each type, including tax levels and various other incentives and deterrents (often disguised as something else), and the distribution is not as straight-line as oilfield to refinery to end-user.  

There is a busy interim trade and exchange business in refined products, and a “storage” capacity to cushion variations in demand in oft-changing circumstances. Synthetic formulae and additives are in there, too, both on their own merits and as potential volume adjusters.

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