A 42 gallon barrel of oil produces....

[ChewChewTrain]

... 20 gallons of gasoline, 12 gallons of diesel and 4 gallons of jet fuel and other products like liquefied petroleum gases and asphalt.

I always thought a barrel was 50 gallons.

"History of the 42 Gallon Barrel of Oil"

History of the 42-Gallon Oil Barrel - American Oil & Gas Historical Society

[ChewChewTrain]

WAIT A SEC! How much fuel is needed to distill a barrel of oil into fuel?

[Draigflag]

How much fuel is used to drill, then pump the oil, then transport it to a refinery, then huge amounts of electricity are used in the refining process, then it's back to fossil fuelled ships, trains and trucks to transport it to storage units, then more fossil fuelled trucks to take it to the pump stations, then it gets burnt in an engine and converted into pollution?!

It's this fossil heavy process than EV haters forget about when they imagine an EV plugged directly into a power station

[trollbait]

Originally Posted by ChewChewTrain

WAIT A SEC! How much fuel is needed to distill a barrel of oil into fuel?

The answer isn't simple, but it mostly depends upon what petroleum you start with, and what you want to make from it.

In a global 'average' petroleum, the straight gasoline fraction is only 20%; way too low to meet demand. So heavier fractions need to be hydrocracked to make smaller molecules. Then those need to be reformed into a size usable by a modern engine. The same applies to the straight gas because its octane rating is only 40 or so.

There is no global average petroleum product. Some are lighter with a higher portion of straight gasoline, and some heavier which might even require cracking to make diesel. Sweet and sour refer to the level of sulfur in it, and the more sulfur, the more energy to remove it.

That's conventional petroleum. Non-conventional sources will take more energy to refine. Tar sands are named such because that is literally what they are; a mix of tar, sand, and water. It needs to be heated with natural gas to just get it flowable through the equipment. So energy is spent just to make it into a heavy crude. Oil shale is a waxy solid, and takes even more energy to turn into a petroleum.