For Group 1 lubricating oils, where solvent extraction and solvent dewaxing were the primary technologies used, the use of specialized grades of crude oil richer in the desirable lube oil property molecules meant some crude oils yielded a great deal of lubricating oil, and lityle ekse. A refinery I worked with had a selerate Process Oils Unit processing heavy crude that had no naphtha / gasoline or LPG content to speak of. The lightest product from the atmospheric distillation column was a 30°API gravity kerosene, which was blended into off-highway duesel at that time. All other fractions except the vacuum tower bottoms were used as lubricating oil nkend stocjs or other specialty industrues such as explosive binders, inks& dyes, Rubbermaid products, etc. Now it's primarily used to supply transformer oils with the lack if emphasis on Group 1 lubricant oils here, along with all the other specialty uses. All the while, this section only runs about 3% of the same crude rate the fuels & petrochemicals part of that refinery runs, on different crude (primarily Eagle Ford shale now).
With catalytic dewaxing (hydroisomerization) technology for lube oils, a much wider slate of crude oils are useful for producing lube oils as the process chemically converts molecules with less desireable lubricating properties to molecules with more desireable lubricating properties, synthesyzing them instead of just depending on the presence of desirable naturally occuring molecules.
So it's not really appropriate any more to talk about lube oil base stock yield from any specific crude oil without taking individual refinery configuration into account. What you see represented are some average yield values from refineries in specific geographuc areas. Refer to a prior post I made in this thread and Link 1 there for a prior explanation of a similar graph posted a few years back.
Plus keep in mind the market demand for lubricating oil volumes is dwarfed by the market demand for fuel & petrochemical volumes.
With catalytic dewaxing (hydroisomerization) technology for lube oils, a much wider slate of crude oils are useful for producing lube oils as the process chemically converts molecules with less desireable lubricating properties to molecules with more desireable lubricating properties, synthesyzing them instead of just depending on the presence of desirable naturally occuring molecules.
So it's not really appropriate any more to talk about lube oil base stock yield from any specific crude oil without taking individual refinery configuration into account. What you see represented are some average yield values from refineries in specific geographuc areas. Refer to a prior post I made in this thread and Link 1 there for a prior explanation of a similar graph posted a few years back.
Plus keep in mind the market demand for lubricating oil volumes is dwarfed by the market demand for fuel & petrochemical volumes.