US Refinery Throughput -- A Snapshot In Time -- February 1, 2017

You will read that the US imported more crude oil last week than the previous week, to about the tuen of 500,000 bopd, now up to a little more than 8 million bopd.

There are two reasons the US imports oil:

• Saudi Arabia needs about a million bopd to source its refinery on the US gulf coast 
• US refineries were configured for heavy oil (Canadian, Venezuelan); US oil is mostly light oil; US refineries can manage with a blend of heavy-light oil

From John Kemp, via Twitter:

If I read the graph correctly, compared to last year, the US refinery throughput has increased about 350,000 bopd.

Compared to the 10-year average, US refinery throughput has increased about 1.5 million bopd. Where is all this gasoline (and other refined products) going? That's a rhetorical question; please don't reply.

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A Note To The Granddaughters

I've always wondered why it was important to the ancient Babylonians that they understood the Pythagorean Theorem, you know:

a² + b² = c²

It had to with measuring wealth. A farmer's prosperity was seen as dependent on the amount of grain he was able to produce, which, in turn, depended on the area that was available to the farmer. Area was known to be length x width, and when those two were equal, the area was equal to a-squared, and in this sense, wealth was a "squared quantity."

Babylonians wanted to know when such squares of whole numbers could be partitioned into other squares of whole numbers. A farmer who owned 25 square units of land could swap it for two square parcels of land, one measuring 16 square units, and one measuring 9 square units.

I assume I'm the only person who did not intuitively see that when learning the Pythagorean Theorem but there you have it. 

This graphic will help:

From Fermat's Last Theorum: Unlocking the Secret of an Ancient Mathematical Problem, Amir D. Aczel, c. 1996; DDS 512.74 ACZ.