Sour Crude

What Is Sour Crude?

Sour crude is a type of crude oil known for its somewhat high sulfur content. The presence of sulfur makes oil more troublesome and costly to refine, making sour crude be seen as a less positive form of crude oil.

Conversely, sweet crude oil is known for its low sulfur content and orders a higher price on international commodity markets.

How Sour Crude Works

Crude oil is defined as "sour" on the off chance that its sulfur content surpasses 0.5%, or on the other hand in the event that it doesn't meet the required limits for hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide levels. Sweet crude, then again, is defined by the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) as petroleum with sulfur levels below 0.42%.

This differentiation among sour and sweet crude is important on the grounds that it influences the cost of refining the oil. Thus, this makes the more costly sour crude less efficient as a source of energy production, decreasing its demand from commodity investors. With an end goal to reduce their total processing costs, sour crude producers frequently look to refine sour crude into heavy oil products, for example, diesel and fuel oil (instead of gasoline).

Important

Another factor adding to the generally high cost of sour crude production is that it requires stabilization before being shipped by oil big haulers. This is due to the way that sour crude contains somewhat high amounts of hydrogen sulfide gas which must be reduced prior to transportation.

In any case, except if the price of oil stays sufficiently high to legitimize expanding sour crude production, sour crude undertakings are frequently delayed or abandoned due to being uneconomical as compared to alternative energy sources.

While many sour crude undertakings have been ended over the course of the years due to lack of investor interest, light sweet crude oil futures stay the most actively traded energy products in the world. This is plainly reflected in the West Texas Intermediate (WTI) commodity futures contract, which is traded on the NYMEX. This highly liquid futures contract is widely utilized among companies and investors in the energy sector, for of speculating on energy prices and overseeing risk through hedging activities.

Process for Preparing Sour Crude

Sour crude is delivered generally in Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, the Canadian territory of Alberta, the Gulf of Mexico, Alaska, Saudi Arabia and different parts of the Middle East.

To prepare sour crude available to be purchased on commodities markets, oil treatment facilities must utilize a cycle known as cracking to separate the many hydrocarbon intensifies contained in the oil into separate substance units. The processing plants must likewise take out different impurities to deliver saleable products.

Processing plants generally favor sweet crude oil due to its low sulfur content and somewhat high yields it produces of high-esteem products, for example, gasoline, diesel fuel, heating oil and fly fuel.

Highlights

• Sour crude products require extra processing to break down hydrocarbon mixtures and eliminate different pollutants.
• Sour crude is a type of oil with high sulfur content.
• It is thought of as less alluring than sweet crude, which has low sulfur content.