Asphalt duell the challenge how to#
Unfortunately, the ensuing quality variations of the generated asphalt were much greater than prior experience, leaving a new and more complex challenge to the end user how to formulate to frequently-changing base binder characteristics. As shale oil carries little asphalt, the result was less available asphalt and the asphalt quality again had changed.įollowing the OPEC price reduction in late 2014, continued investment in the shale fields became uneconomical and suddenly the refining community shifted back to processing large quantities of imported heavy crude. When PDVSA asphalt returned to the marketplace, the product quality had changed and the asphalt marketplace had also changed.ĭuring the shale boom from 2008-2014, the increasing availability of low-cost shale oil from fracking fields like the Bakken and Eagle Ford, enticed refiners to process less heavy crude. The PDVSA strike and resulting loss of asphalt supply in 2002-2003, challenged the industry to quickly learn how to qualify and use alternative asphalts and extenders. Refiners in the Midwest and Rocky Mountain regions began to experience a significant decline in m-Value, which in many cases, was tied to their processing an increasing amount of this synthetic crude oil and that trend continues to expand today as more synthetic crude is processed by an increasing number of refiners across the country. Upgraders were required to produce a “synthetic crude oil” that could be efficiently transported by rail or pipeline but the resulting characteristics of this synthetic crude oil and particularly of the contained bitumen are very different than that of conventional crude oil. In the 1990’s, global crude oil was trending towards heavy sour (sulfur-bearing) crude with the resulting asphalt production increasingly being fed to cokers to maximize the recovered value of the heavy crude.ĭevelopment of the Canadian Oil Sands and subsequent recovery of the sand-bound bitumen generated a new heavy crude but the recovered oil was too viscous to transport without dilution.
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The asphalt industry has experienced many complex challenges over the last 20-25 years and the continued success of individual companies is strongly dependent on efficient operations and utilizing new technologies and new products to solve the challenges they face.