Course 15 of 20 · Crude Oil Desk Academy

Refinery Crude Procurement

Stage E, Advanced commercial practice. Level 8 of 10.

Buying for a plant: crude diet optimisation, linear programming inputs and procurement strategy.

123 chapters · 12 modules · every chapter one 8 to 10 minute explainer · builds on: Course 03, Course 14

Enrol or enquire See the 123 chapters
How a chapter is sized

One chapter is one idea taken to the point of use

Each chapter is a single self-contained explainer of 8 to 10 narrated minutes, covering one idea to the point where you can use it.

Chapters run in order. Each one assumes only what the chapters before it taught, and capability belonging to a later course is named and deferred rather than half-covered.

Curriculum

12 modules · 123 chapters

Open any module for its full chapter list, in teaching order.

M0 The Refinery as a Buyer Ch 1-9
  1. Why a Refinery Buys Differently From a Trader
  2. What the Procurement Function Is Accountable For
  3. The Question a Plant Buyer Really Asks
  4. Feedstock Cost as the Dominant Line in the Margin
  5. Who Sits Across the Table
  6. The Advantage of Knowing Your Own Plant
  7. The Blind Spots a Single Plant Cannot Avoid
  8. Cheap on the Screen, Expensive in the Units
  9. Map of the Buying Cycle and What Is Deferred
M1 Configuration and Unit Constraints Ch 10-21
  1. Configuration Is a Set of Capacities, Not a Label
  2. The Crude Unit and Its Two Different Limits
  3. Cut Points as a Commercial Lever
  4. The Vacuum Unit and the Fate of the Bottom
  5. When the Catalytic Cracker Is the Binding Unit
  6. The Hydrocracker and What It Will Eat
  7. The Coker and the Floor Under Heavy Crude
  8. Hydrotreating Capacity and the Sulphur Wall
  9. Hydrogen as a Hidden Purchase Constraint
  10. Sulphur Recovery and Permit Limits as Buying Limits
  11. Metallurgy and the Acid Crude Ceiling
  12. Tankage, Segregation and How Many Grades You Can Hold
M2 The Crude Diet Ch 22-31
  1. Why the Plant Runs a Basket
  2. Base Grades and Swing Grades
  3. The Diet Written as Property Ranges
  4. What Averages Honestly and What Does Not
  5. When Two Cheap Crudes Cannot Share a Tank
  6. Diet Stability and Why the Plant Resists Change
  7. Opportunity Crude: What the Label Hides
  8. Buying Intermediates Instead of Crude
  9. Condensate and Very Light Streams as a Diet Problem
  10. The Diet as a Rolling Commitment
M3 The Crude Library Ch 32-42
  1. What the Crude Library Holds
  2. Cutting an Assay to Your Own Fractions
  3. Property Vectors and the Indices That Let Them Blend
  4. Swing Cuts and Where Flexibility Lives in the Data
  5. Assay Age, Drift and Reverification
  6. Whose Assay Do You Believe
  7. Onboarding a Grade the Plant Has Never Run
  8. Valuing a Cargo You Have Almost No Data On
  9. Representation Error and Where It Hides
  10. Who May Change a Crude Record
  11. A Library Entry Built From Start to Finish
M4 Plant, Price and Logistics Inputs Ch 43-52
  1. Writing a Unit Capacity Into the Model
  2. Yield Correlations and Unit Submodels
  3. Product Specifications as Model Constraints
  4. Utilities, Fuel and Hydrogen as Priced Rows
  5. Where the Product Price Vector Comes From
  6. Feeding Delivered Crude Cost Into the Model
  7. What the Model Means by a Month
  8. Opening and Closing Stock as Boundary Conditions
  9. Fixed Obligations the Optimisation Must Honour
  10. Calibrating the Model Against What the Plant Did
M5 Running and Reading the Linear Programme Ch 53-63
  1. What the Objective Function Is Maximising
  2. The Base Case and Why It Should Be Dull
  3. Reading a Solution: Activities, Bounds and Slack
  4. Shadow Prices: What a Constraint Costs You
  5. Reduced Cost: Why the Model Refused a Grade
  6. Parametric Runs and Price Scanning
  7. The Value Curve of a Grade Against Volume
  8. Sensitivity Ranging and the Width of an Answer
  9. Alternative Optima and Flip-Flopping Answers
  10. Model Error and Market Error, Told Apart
  11. Presenting a Result to the People Who Must Run It
M6 Marginal Value and the Buy Decision Ch 64-74
  1. The Marginal Value of a Grade to This Plant Today
  2. Turning Marginal Value Into a Bid
  3. The Walk-Away Price and Holding It
  4. Why the Second Cargo Is Worth Less
  5. Incremental Thinking Against Average Thinking
  6. Displacing a Grade Already Bought
  7. Evaluating an Offer in Ninety Minutes
  8. Comparing Two Offers of Different Grades
  9. The Cost of One Cargo Too Many
  10. When the Model Says Buy and the Plant Says No
  11. Recording the Decision and Its Assumptions
M7 The Procurement Calendar Ch 75-84
  1. How Far Ahead a Refiner Must Commit
  2. The Monthly Cycle From Plan to Lifting
  3. Voyage Time and the Regional Buying Horizon
  4. Nomination Windows and the Official Price Clock
  5. The Coverage Curve: How Much Bought by When
  6. Leaving a Slot Open on Purpose
  7. The Spot Tail and Late Month Buying
  8. Reoptimising Mid-Month Without Breaking the Plan
  9. Plan Against Actual, and What the Variance Says
  10. The Meeting Rhythm and Who Actually Decides
M8 Term, Spot and the Supply Portfolio Ch 85-93
  1. What a Term Barrel Buys the Plant
  2. What a Spot Barrel Buys That Term Cannot
  3. Choosing the Mix: Security Against Flexibility
  4. Baseload Volume and the Minimum Safe Commitment
  5. Formula Priced and Spot Priced Barrels Side by Side
  6. Volume Tolerance as Operating Room
  7. The Supply Relationship as an Asset
  8. Over-Committed: The Cost of Too Much Term
  9. Stepping Away From a Standing Supply
M9 Turnaround and Outage Buying Ch 94-102
  1. The Turnaround Cycle as a Procurement Event
  2. Planning the Diet Into a Shutdown
  3. Stock Build Before a Shutdown
  4. Ramp-Down and Ramp-Up Diets
  5. Buying While a Conversion Unit Is Down
  6. An Unplanned Outage With a Cargo Already on Water
  7. Catalyst Life and Its Quiet Effect on Crude Choice
  8. Seasonal Specification Changes and the Diet They Force
  9. Getting Back to Plan After a Restart
M10 Buying Against Product Cracks Ch 103-112
  1. The Margin the Plant Is Actually Chasing
  2. Gasoline Season and Diesel Season in the Basket
  3. What the Light-Heavy Spread Is Paying For
  4. The Sweet-Sour Spread Against Your Treating Cost
  5. When Heavy Crude Stops Being Cheap
  6. Economic Run Cuts and the Arithmetic Behind Them
  7. Minimum Rates and Why You Keep Running at a Loss
  8. Buying for a Margin You Have Not Locked
  9. A Loss-Making Month and What Buying Can Still Do
  10. The Basket Across a Full Year
M11 Organisation, Governance and a Worked Month Ch 113-123
  1. How a Crude Procurement Team Is Built
  2. The Standing Argument With Operations
  3. Procurement Against the Group Trading Arm
  4. Pricing Crude Into the Plant
  5. How Buyers Are Measured, and How That Distorts Them
  6. The Mandate to Commit
  7. Reviewing a Purchase After the Fact
  8. A Worked Month, Part One: The Plan
  9. A Worked Month, Part Two: The Buying
  10. A Worked Month, Part Three: The Reckoning
  11. What Diet Optimisation Cannot Tell You

The brochure gives each of these 123 chapters a paragraph on what it covers and what you can do once you have worked through it.

This is course 15 of twenty

It stands alone, and it is also the entry point to the Crude Oil Desk Academy pathway.

Enrol or enquire See the whole pathway