Condensates -- October 8, 2014

Condensates. From Bakken.com. 

U.S. export regulators may wait for such a definition before they issue any more rulings on exports of “processed” condensate, the attendees said. The first two rulings rattled the industry earlier this year.

The term refers broadly to any type of oil that “condenses” into a liquid after being freed from high-pressure wells, where it often lurks in gas form, or separated from gas.

But once it becomes a liquid, there is no agreed way to tell condensate from ordinary crude. Most state regulators do not even measure it; those that do, only measure gas-related condensate, not that from the hydraulically fractured oil wells.

Most industry insiders expect the definition to revolve around API gravity, a standard measure of density with higher readings produced by lighter grades. Condensate is the lightest of the light.

Refiner Phillips 66 and midstream giant Plains All American  have said condensate is oil with an API gravity of 45 or above. Meanwhile, Marathon Petroleum Corp’s top executive said in a recent interview he believed condensate should have an API gravity of 60 and above.

Without a universal standard, production data vary wildly. The EIA’s own figures suggest that anywhere from 8 percent to 16 percent of U.S. crude oil production is condensate – a difference of more than half a million barrels a day.

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A Note to the Granddaughters

This "project' is part of the permanent collection at the Ft Worth Museum of Modern Art. It is currently being shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. I was unaware of the most recent (2014) portrait; perhaps the photographs are at more than one museum. Something to check out.