California Air Resources Board Releases Carbon Intensity Of Crude Oils Refined In California Report

As part of California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard, the California Air Resources Board is required to post the annual average carbon intensity calculation for crude oils supplied to California refineries. The report for 2012 was released on March 20, 2014.

The average carbon intensity for all the crude oil refined in California refineries in 2012 was 11.36 gCO2/MJ, down from 11.39 gCO2/MJ in 2010.

According to the report, the state of Alaska was the largest single supplier outside of California at 75,026,823 barrels with an assigned carbon intensity of 12.81 gCO2/MJ.

What I find most interesting about the report is the assigned values for crude oil from the Canada oil sands and how they compare to other sources of crude oil.

Let's look at the three largest Canadian crude oil sources which are all from oil sands.

Albian Heavy Synthetic supplied 4,407,187 barrels with an assigned carbon intensity of 21.02 gCO2/MJ. Cold Lake supplied 4,540,591 barrels with an assigned carbon intensity of 18.74 gCO2/MJ. Suncor Synthetic supplied 2,925,958 barrels with an assigned carbon intensity of 24.49 gCO2/MJ.

There are oil sands deposits similar to the Canadian oil sands in the Orinoco belt of Venezuela. Let's look at the two largest Venezuelan crude oil sources which are both from oil sands.

Petrozuata supplied 1,969,774 barrels with an assigned carbon intensity of 23.58 gCO2/MJ. Zuata supplied 1,056,003 barrels with an assigned carbon intensity of 23.50 gCO2/MJ.

The surprising  part of this report is that the crude oils with the highest assigned carbon intensities don't come from oil sands but from within California.

Coalinga supplied 5,544,989 barrels with an assigned carbon intensity of 25.36 gCO2/MJ. Cymric supplied 13,684,277 barrels with an assigned carbon intensity of 19.91 gCO2/MJ. Kern Front supplied 3,322,714 barrels with an assigned carbon intensity of 25.06 gCO2/MJ. Midway-Sunset supplied 29,280,377 barrels with an assigned carbon intensity of 21.18 gCO2/MJ. Poso Creek supplied 2,735,209 barrels with an assigned carbon intensity of 28.41 gCO2/MJ. Round Mountain supplied 3,848,124 barrels with an assigned carbon intensity of 28.73 gCO2/MJ. San Ardo supplied 7,262,337 barrels with an assigned carbon intensity of 28.82 gCO2/MJ.

There are other California oil fields with higher carbon intensities but I only included sources that had supplied over one million barrels.