Definition

Oil refinery or petroleum refinery is an industrial process plant where crude oil is transformed and refined into more useful products such as petroleum naphtha, gasoline, diesel fuel, asphalt base, heating oil, kerosene, liquefied petroleum gas, jet fuel and fuel oils. Petrochemicals feed stock like ethylene and propylene can also be produced directly by cracking crude oil without the need of using refined products of crude oil such as naphtha.

What is 'Oil Refinery'

An industrial plant that refines crude oil into petroleum products such as diesel, gasoline and heating oils. Oil refineries essentially serve as the second stage in the production process following the actual extraction by oil rigs. The first step in the refining process is distillation where crude oil is heated at extreme temperatures to separate the different hydrocarbons.

Explaining 'Oil Refinery'

The crude oil components, once separated can be sold to different industries for a broad range of purposes. Lubricants can be sold to industrial plants immediately after distillation, but other products require more refining before reaching the final user. Major refineries have the capacity to process hundreds of thousand barrels of crude oil a day.

Further Reading

Relationships among US oil prices and oil industry equity indices
www.sciencedirect.com [PDF]
… vendors, etc.), resource (materials, equipment, funds, etc.) unavailability, climatic environment, the economic and political … International Journal of Production Economics, 103: 90–103 … Third, the proposed framework was then applied to a grass-root oil refinery construction project …

Environmental regulation and productivity: evidence from oil refineries
www.mitpressjournals.org [PDF]
… vendors, etc.), resource (materials, equipment, funds, etc.) unavailability, climatic environment, the economic and political … International Journal of Production Economics, 103: 90–103 … Third, the proposed framework was then applied to a grass-root oil refinery construction project …

Real options and interactions with financial flexibility
www.jstor.org [PDF]
… vendors, etc.), resource (materials, equipment, funds, etc.) unavailability, climatic environment, the economic and political … International Journal of Production Economics, 103: 90–103 … Third, the proposed framework was then applied to a grass-root oil refinery construction project …

Risk factors in stock returns of Canadian oil and gas companies
www.sciencedirect.com [PDF]
… vendors, etc.), resource (materials, equipment, funds, etc.) unavailability, climatic environment, the economic and political … International Journal of Production Economics, 103: 90–103 … Third, the proposed framework was then applied to a grass-root oil refinery construction project …

Oil price shocks and industry stock returns
www.sciencedirect.com [PDF]
… vendors, etc.), resource (materials, equipment, funds, etc.) unavailability, climatic environment, the economic and political … International Journal of Production Economics, 103: 90–103 … Third, the proposed framework was then applied to a grass-root oil refinery construction project …

Common and fundamental factors in stock returns of Canadian oil and gas companies
www.sciencedirect.com [PDF]
… vendors, etc.), resource (materials, equipment, funds, etc.) unavailability, climatic environment, the economic and political … International Journal of Production Economics, 103: 90–103 … Third, the proposed framework was then applied to a grass-root oil refinery construction project …

Oil price dynamics: A behavioral finance approach with heterogeneous agents
www.sciencedirect.com [PDF]
… vendors, etc.), resource (materials, equipment, funds, etc.) unavailability, climatic environment, the economic and political … International Journal of Production Economics, 103: 90–103 … Third, the proposed framework was then applied to a grass-root oil refinery construction project …