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In response to the ongoing global oil price surge, the Philippines recently received over 700,000 barrels of Russian crude oil that arrived in Bataan.
As of Saturday, Reuters reported that total imports have reached up to 1.5 million barrels.
But what exactly is crude oil, and how does it become usable fuel?
Crude oil is the unrefined form of petroleum and serves as the raw material for various fuel products distributed in the country.
Upon arrival, crude oil undergoes refining through several stages:
- Separation: Crude oil is heated in a furnace, causing it to separate into different components based on boiling points, producing various fractions of liquid and vapor.
- Conversion: Heavier, lower-value fractions are processed into more valuable products through a process known as “cracking,” which breaks down larger hydrocarbon molecules into smaller ones.
- Treatment: Refiners further process and treat the outputs by removing impurities and adding chemicals to meet required fuel specifications, resulting in finished petroleum products such as gasoline and diesel.
These processes take place in oil refineries such as the Petron Bataan Refinery, currently the country’s only operating refinery.
It has a processing capacity of about 180,000 barrels per day and supplies a significant portion of the country’s fuel demand.—Jiselle Anne C. Casucian/MCG, GMA Integrated News
