The right word

April 28, 2014
As both writers and copyreaders, Oil & Gas Journal editors spend the bulk of their days charged with perfecting the art of word choice.

Robert Brelsford
Downstream Technology Editor

As both writers and copyreaders, Oil & Gas Journal editors spend the bulk of their days charged with perfecting the art of word choice.

From using her or his own words to weave a news story from scratch to bringing order to technical article submissions, the editor's fundamental task becomes choosing language that preserves an accurate, precise history of the oil and gas business.

But consider for a moment the natural order of any language belonging to any particular group of people.

As a culture and the activities of its daily experience change over time, so too will the language used to describe those things evolve and adapt. New words will emerge, old words will take on new meanings, and some words will vanish altogether.

The language of the petroleum industry is no exception, particularly during what many of its members are calling its renaissance.

For this downstream technology editor, it's precisely this renaissance that has led to the need for a closer examination (and perhaps clarification) of the word "refinery."

To be precise

The industry typically gives us its own language to describe and identify its plants and processes or the designs and styles of its installations and infrastructure. Many of these words have become standardized, part of our greater international vocabulary, both industry-related and at-large.

But as North American light, tight crude oil (LTO) production continues to expand and prompt many US operators to seek ways to contend with a decades-old export ban to bring surplus crude to market, the term "mini-refinery" increasingly has started to crop up in general media reports as well as in company press releases.

But is this "mini-refinery" creature actually a refinery as the industry has come to understand that word?

As explained by the US Energy Information Administration, a refinery is "an installation that manufactures finished petroleum products from crude oil, unfinished oils, natural gas liquids, other hydrocarbons, and oxygenates."

That's a mouthful to make just one very simple point: a refinery makes finished products.

The word "manufactures" also is a loaded term when it comes to refining.

A particular refinery can range from simple to complex, and the types of "manufacturing" that take place span the spectrum from no-frills separation to the more intricate processes of coking, cracking, isomerization, hydrotreating, and blending.

As it has been used to-date, the term "mini-refinery" actually describes the simplest of refineries, or rather, the first one or two steps of separation (distillation) and sometimes reforming that take place in all refineries.

Unless the installation contains additional units to further process crude oil into finished products, however, these "mini-refineries" are more appropriately termed "topping plants" or "splitters."

Splitting hairs

To clarify then, at OGJ, a refinery is a plant that, through a series of processes, destroys or breaks crude down into an array of desired, finished petroleum products.

This distinction may be technical, yes, with some perhaps tempted to call it finicky or fussy. And it very well may be all of those things.

But with more and more of these topping plants and splitters in the works to process rising North American LTO production into exportable material likely to require further refining once it reaches a final destination, the distinction is, after all, a precise one.

The call of all OGJ editors, regardless of the words given them, is to find the language that best serves their readers.

OGJ is, after all, known as the industry's publication of record, with some—since its first iteration in 1902—having gone so far as to describe it as the industry's conscience.

This is by design, mind you, a mission instilled and still sustained by a guiding principle in OGJ's founding—its accurate and independent reporting style.