Refineries turn crude into the barrel's real products — gasoline, diesel, jet — and their capacity is the hidden bottleneck behind pump prices. US plants are currently running at 96.2% of capacity (EIA, week ending 2026-08-07). Below: the process in brief, the world's largest plants, and the live refining margin.
| Refinery | Country | ≈Capacity | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jamnagar (Reliance) | India | ≈1.24 Mb/d | The world's largest — an export machine on the Gujarat coast |
| Ulsan (SK Energy) | South Korea | ≈0.84 Mb/d | |
| Paraguana (PDVSA) | Venezuela | ≈0.94 Mb/d nameplate | Operating far below capacity for years |
| Ruwais (ADNOC) | UAE | ≈0.82 Mb/d | Major expansion underway |
| Yeosu (GS Caltex) | South Korea | ≈0.80 Mb/d | |
| Onsan (S-Oil) | South Korea | ≈0.67 Mb/d | |
| Port Arthur (Motiva) | United States | ≈0.63 Mb/d | Largest in North America; Saudi Aramco-owned |
| Dangote | Nigeria | ≈0.65 Mb/d | Started 2024 — Africa's largest, reshaping Atlantic gasoline flows |
| Galveston Bay (Marathon) | United States | ≈0.59 Mb/d | |
| Baytown (ExxonMobil) | United States | ≈0.56 Mb/d | Oldest of the US giants, opened 1919 |
Hand-curated from operator disclosures, approximate nameplate capacity. Refining economics live: the crack spread · weekly utilization on fundamentals · what a barrel yields.
Three core steps: distillation heats crude (~350–400°C) in a tower where fractions condense at different heights — gases at top, gasoline-range naphtha, then kerosene, diesel, and heavy residue at the bottom; conversion units (catalytic crackers, hydrocrackers, cokers) break the low-value heavy fractions into more gasoline and diesel; and treating/blending removes sulfur and mixes final specification fuels. Complexity is the key economics: simple refineries can only skim light products, while complex ones profitably run cheap heavy sour crude.
US refineries ran at 96.2% of capacity in the latest EIA week (ending 2026-08-07). Utilization above ~93% signals a tight product market; spring and fall maintenance ("turnaround") seasons typically pull it into the 80s.
The Reliance complex at Jamnagar, India — about 1.24 million barrels per day across its two refineries, built primarily to export fuels to the West. The largest in the US is Motiva Port Arthur, Texas (~630,000 b/d), owned by Saudi Aramco.
No large greenfield US refinery has been built since 1977 — permitting, community opposition, and the prospect of declining gasoline demand make a multi-billion, 40-year asset hard to justify. Instead, existing sites expanded massively (capacity grew for decades without "new" refineries), and several have recently converted to renewable diesel production.