About Whiting Refinery
In the late 1800s, when most people still traveled by horse, train or boat, the refinery sold mostly kerosene, and its gasoline production was considered no more than a waste product. That perception changed quickly, of course, and the rapid growth of automobiles propelled the facility into what’s now the largest inland refinery in the U.S. and the nation’s third largest overall.
The initial capacity at Whiting, 17,000 barrels a day within a year of operation, was large by the standards of the 1890s, and has progressively grown to today’s 405,000 barrels a day of processing capability.
Early innovation
The Whiting Refinery uses the latest technology along with the most modern safety and environmental processes and practices. But that innovation began early. From 1909-1913, Dr. William M. Burton, General Manager of what was then the Standard Oil facility, and Dr. Robert E. Humphreys, Chief Chemist and head of the refinery’s laboratory, devised an economically practical way to increase gasoline yields using heat and pressure.
Their innovation became known as “thermal cracking,” meaning heat was used to “crack” petroleum molecules, and pressure was applied to separate the resulting petroleum streams into useful products. This process was quickly adopted throughout the refining industry.
What we produce
The BP Whiting Refinery has the capacity to process up to 405,000 barrels of crude oil per day, and produce 15 million gallons of refined products using three crude processing units. These units distill the crude oil that enters the refinery by pipeline into 5 main streams:
- Fuel gases: which are used to efficiently heat the refinery process units.
- Naphtha: which is further processed to produce propane and butane and contribute to gasoline blending.
- Distillate: which is further processed to produce ultra low sulfur diesel and jet fuel.
- Gas oil: This is converted to ultra low sulfur diesel fuel and gasoline.
- Residual: This is heated and processed to produce both petroleum coke for power plants and asphalt for road construction.
We also make 8 percent of all asphalt used in the United States.
