What does it take to make a gallon of gas?

People - FHR employs about 800 people full time at the Pine Bend refinery. About 400 are members of the PACE Union (Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers), local 7-622. FHR also hires more than 200 contract workers on average every day from the St. Paul Trades and Labor Assembly. During large maintenance events, called "turnarounds", there can be over 1,000 contract workers on-site, working around the clock.

Crude Oil - Every day, approximately 12 million gallons of crude oil arrive at the refinery via pipelines. Crude rate has increased during the past 10 years by nearly 50% and the refinery has grown 13 times larger since it opened in 1955 - at the onset, the refinery handled less than 1 million gallons a day. Most of the crude oil that FHR processes comes from the Canadian province of Alberta and travels via pipeline to the refinery. The refinery can also receive crude oil from another pipeline that runs south to Wood River, Illinois (across from St. Louis, MO) where it connects with other crude oil pipelines from the Gulf of Mexico. FHR is able to obtain Caribbean crude oil (from Mexico and Venezuela) or from anywhere in the world through this pipeline.

Electricity FHR is among the largest users of electricity in Minnesota. With over 1600 pumps and compressors running around the clock, FHR depends on a reliable supply of electricity.

Water - FHR pumps between 7 and 8 million gallons a day from 7 groundwater wells in the refinery under a water appropriation permit from the MN DNR. About half of this evaporates into the air through FHR's cooling towers, and the remainder is discharged from FHR's wastewater treatment plant under a water discharge permit from the MPCA.

FHR used about 2.6 billion gallons of groundwater in 1999, about the same amount used in 1990. However, since 1990, FHR has increased the amount of crude oil processed by about 40%, meaning the amount of water used per gallon of crude oil processed has dropped by more than 25% - from 0.9 gallons of water per gallon of crude in 1990 to 0.65 gallons of water per gallon of crude in 1999.

Natural Gas - FHR uses natural gas both as a fuel (to supplement the fuel gas and fuel oil produced from the crude oil in the refining process) and as a feedstock to produce hydrogen.

Other Supplies - FHR uses a variety of other supplies to help process crude oil:

• catalysts to speed the process of turning crude oil into gasoline and other products
• ethanol for gasoline blending (FHR blends over 85 million gallons of ethanol a year into gasoline)
• other chemicals for crude processing and wastewater treatment
• office supplies
• pipes, pumps, valves, and other processing equipment