What percentage of gasoline is produced from domestic natural gas wells vs. imported crude?

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By Joe Eichler (about the author) Page 1 of 1 page(s)

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For OpEdNews: Joe Eichler - Writer

A few weeks ago I posted a question on Yahoo's answers service. It is a question that has pleagued me for years. It became increasingly important that I find the answer to this question as we are all facing the unbelievable price of gasoline and the damage it is doing to our economy while the oil companies rake in record profits.

Here is the question posted and answer received on Yahoo:

Fact #1 - 37 percent of the refined petroleum products sold in the US are extracted and refined in the US.
Source: Energy Information Administration
http://www.rff.org/rff/Events/Energy2050...

Fact # 2 - I worked in the oil industry in 1977-1981 and the price of gasoline is not a supply issue like we are being told.

Fact# 3 - Natural gas condensate is a low-density mixture of hydrocarbon liquids that are present as gaseous components in the raw natural gas produced from many natural gas fields. It condenses out of the raw gas if the temperature is reduced to below the hydrocarbon dew point temperature of the raw gas. The natural gas condensate is also referred to as simply condensate, or gas condensate, or sometimes-natural gasoline. This natural gasoline is what we burned in our company pick-ups and cars. No refining required.

Fact # 4 - Our congress is aware of these figures...and they still do not ask the hard questions of the oil companies or reveal what they know.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_gas...

Additional Details
I am hoping for a environmental or petroleum engineer or a state commissioner who keeps track of the state resources to comment...someone who knows the production process that I am referring to because condensate is a natural gasoline that comes from "wet" natural gas wells...I worked in the field on the glycol heaters and dryers that separated the liquid from the dry gas during the summers as a college intern for Sun Gas company a subsidiary of Sunoco while I studied engineering at UT so please don't comment unless you know the process.

I understand the argument for opening more public lands (ANWR-Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge) for drilling but I question that also. I can't imagine the additional expense of exploration, drilling, extracting and transporting under those harsh conditions wouldn't somehow be passed along to the consumer in a higher price at the pump thus more profit. Why would we even need to bear those expenses anyway when production from established fields is currently so low? Of the already established 38.6 million acres of offshore territories only approximately 8 million acres are currently being produced. Of the already established 42.8 million acres of onshore territory only 12.3 million acres are being produced. All this and Congress is now considering allowing China to control our off shore fields...what the heck is going on?

I originally posted this question in the politics section and got 4 responses who were obviously ignorant to this process or they wanted to discredit the information that I was trying to put out - that gasoline comes from more sources than imported crude and the price of gasoline (which I suspect is largely a domestically produced product of natural gas wells) should not be moving quite in reaction in the price of crude Our Congress knows this and we the public are being held hostage by this (parading the oil industry CEO's in a mock investigation) price manipulation. We just need to know the percentage of gasoline that is produced domestically from sources other that imported crude. This information should be available freely to the public but it must be a closely guarded secret. I have been looking for this information for years, however, on limited resources.

Answer
Gasoline From Natural Gas
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, in 2006 the USA used 9.253 million barrels of (motor) gasoline each day. On the other hand, there were 811 million barrels of natural gas liquids produced in the USA in 2006, including both condensate extracted at the lease (182 million barrels) and liquids extracted in later processing (629 million barrels.) This is equal to 2.222 million barrels per day, which is around 24% of the gasoline consumption figure. The lease condensate production alone is equal to 0.499 million barrels a day, 5% of the consumption figure. Also according to the EIA, in 2006 refineries in the USA used 5563 million barrels of crude oil (15.24 million barrels per day) and 180 million barrels of natural gas liquids (0.493 million barrels per day, or around 3% of the crude oil input volume.)

Source(s):
Natural gas liquids production: http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/natur...

Gasoline consumption:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/basics/quickoil.h...

Refinery statistics:
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pn...

Asker's Comment:
Activity is way up in the Texas natural gas fields. Wells are being uncapped and reworked to get as much domestic production out into the global market as possible to take advantage of record prices. Productions levels must be way above 2006 values-2006 values are almost 3 years old.

Additionally, we should impose a restriction on exports of domestic production. Stop the oil companies both domestic and forge in from offering up our reserves on the global market until domestic consumption is covered. You can't trade US reserves if you are Halliburton or a subsidiary.