Analysis of Energy Use and CO2 Emissions in the US Refining Sector, With Projections for 2025

This analysis uses linear programming modeling of the U.S. refining sector to estimate total annual energy consumption and CO2 emissions in 2025, for four projected U.S. crude oil slates. The baseline is similar to the current U.S. crude slate; the other three contain larger proportions of higher density, higher sulfur crudes than the current or any previous U.S. crude slates. The latter cases reflect aggressive assumptions regarding the volumes of Canadian crudes in the U.S. crude slate in 2025. The analysis projects U.S. refinery energy use 3.7%-6.3% (approximate to 0.13-0.22 quads/year) higher and refinery CO2 emissions 5.4%-9.3% (approximate to 0.014-0.024 gigatons/year) higher in the study cases than in the baseline. Refining heavier crude slates would require significant investments in new refinery processing capability, especially coking and hydrotreating units. These findings differ substantially from a recent estimate asserting that processing heavy oil or bitumen blends could increase industry CO2 emissions by 1.6-3.7 gigatons/year.