Is (Saudi/sour crude) unusable as gasoline or are people who say this messed up?

Question

I can't see why that oil wouldn't be able to be refined too? What is the big deal? Might cost a little more, but why not? A little more filtering perhaps?

Answer 1

What makes it "sour" is mainly sulfur, which is a major source of air pollution if left in motor fuel, so it has to be filtered out.  This costs money.

Answer 2

Not all Saudi crude is sour, but that has nothing to do with investing, or is the concern that do trade or speculate in crude

Answer 3

The price they buy and sell with is always kept as a secret....since it is crude oil it requires refining and a whole lot of processes so finally govt. adds a lot of tax, duty, other surcharge on the oil/gas and then sell it to the citizens, thus making a cut. same with speculators. infact king abdullah of saudi arabia just said yesterday that speculators are to blame for the oil crisis.

But prices per barrel will remain high, and due to this latest illusion being sold to the public, oil prices are set to increase even further. The following article is a good synopsis how the decision taken by Saudi Arabia affects the prices of oil.

Answer 4

As other posters have pointed out it does take special refineries to deal with sour crude. In the case of Alaska North Slope Crude, which is a heavy crude similar in nature to sour crude, it too takes special refineries. There are only a handfull of them in the US which is why most of this type of crude is shipped overseas or it is refined and the wast is put back into the Alaska Pipeline and shipped overseas for the refineries that are capable of handling the impurities to deal with. This is why we need to build more refineries. The refineries we have in the US were built at a time when the best oil was available in the market. As time has passed we are now extracting oil that was less desired and more expensive to refine when the refineries were built. This is a VERY serious problem in this country and one that must be solved.

Answer 5

Thats exactly the problem. Sweet crude is easily and quickly refinable unlike sour crude that has to be painstakingly filtered in special refineries.