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> It's not a big threat to the US. The US is a net oil exporter,

The thing is that the US exported oil is sweet crude, and our own refineries are not made for that type of oil. So for the petroleum products used within the US need the heavy oil that is imported. So if the world goes tits up so that the US can only use the oil it produces, it would take time before the US could refine it.

>Trump could make up with Canada

I'm sorry, did this suddenly become a comedy?

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>So for the petroleum products used within the US need the heavy oil that is imported.

Is that really true? I've heard experts say that sweet crude is easy to refine. I've always thought that the reason US refiners bother with sour crude is that they're better at refining it than non-US refiners are, so they make a little more money that way.


https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/america-produces-enough-oil-...

This link is just one of many that all suggest that the US is just not set up to refine light crude.


That link doesn't clear up anything for me

I'm not going to lmgtfy with other links. If you have something contradictory to show, then by all means show. I'm never one to be unwilling to learn something new, but I will not just accept the comment of a random stranger on the interweb providing no supporting evidence for their position that opposes my current understanding.


I didn't downvote you. In fact, I upvoted because you didn't dig in when challenged, but rather acknowledged the possibility that you might be wrong, which is more than the writers of most comments on here can manage. (I, too, might be mistaken on this topic.)

As I understand it, light sweet crude is in fact easier to refine, but refineries still have to be set up for it to get optimal or economically viable results, which US refineries largely are not. US refineries certainly could switch, but the process of doing so would be expensive and time consuming.

That's not at all the case. We have refineries that can handle everything from sweet to sour to Canadian tar sands

That and it's way easier to go from retooling from sour to sweet than reverse, way easier to go from heavy to light than reverse, etc. Not suggesting it's just a flip a switch kind of change, but it's usually a net reduction in complexity in refining for both of those changes.

That goes against every thing I've ever read or heard. I'm no oil man, nor play one on TV, but I only know what information I've come across in reading or hearing in radio/tv. Maybe my googlefu is lacking, but a quick search still suggests this is the answer.



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