I’ve done a quick look at US, WW & China comparing Dec2009-Jan2010 vs Dec 2010-Jan 2011 and basically the numbers haven’t changed much…..and unfortunately neither did lot the errors, especially those in China were repeated.
The US has easy correction since EIA has their own table (since ~2001 when OGJ delisted +17 simple asphalt refineries that are still operating) so the 129 refineries for 2010 (down by 1 since Western integrated two New Mexico refineries into one) is really 146 or 149 according EIA. They also don’t have lot new capacity increases from 2008-2010 logged in on coking refineries (ie Sinclair Wyoming coker isn’t listed, Coffeyville Kansas expansion coker & crude cap isn’t shown).
The World Wide tables ex-US also havent changed much they added 4 new refineries but took off 3 of them so they only showed an increase of refinery in total of 662. If you add corrections for US asphalt refineries +17, and China true total ~+151 (56Gov + 95 Indep) vs their 48 = +103 you get total of 782 refineries (but doesn’t include new grassroot additions that were overlooked). It is comparatively worse for coker charge & petcoke tpd since nearly half the China refineries have cokers, none Mexico tpd is shown and several additions haven’t been made.
China is almost the same as last year – they have mutiple entries with same location but different refineries and show almost none of the independent refineries. They have total of 54 refineries and only 8 cokers (they show 12 but 4 are: Eureka, RHDS & other thermal)! Compared to over 82 cokers I had in 2008 before the new coker additions 2009 & 2010. These type errors completely misrepresent the actual size of China’s capacity and coking position – even Jacobs & others only have about 37-40 of government coking refineries and about 15-23 of independent coking refineries listed (they don’t really track lot simple refineries without cokers).
Another one still really screwed up was Mexico – they finaly increased cokers by 100MBD in 2010 for 2 of 3 new cokers they left off ….. but have NONE of fuel coke tpd production shown!!
I usually try go through and get major errors & send to OGJ (seldom register until lot my contacts start bitching at them) and then post & distribute some big holes like these to get more aware of slopy job they are doing on updates these days, and the crazy delisting of any plants not making finished fuel products?
The reason I do this grief is that basically EIA & IEA use the OGJ WW database for WW input to do their Short & Long Term forecast and historical views and its also used as starting point by all big outfits like CERA, Purvin & Gertz, Woodmac and others, although they claim to have their own database, only few have caught errors.
Regards