Custos no processo de refino do petróleo: um estudo de caso da refinaria Alberto Pasqualini (REFAP)

Abstract

Even with the growing demand for sustainable energy sources in recent decades, oil products continue to be the main fuels used in the world, also having several applications in various areas of industry. The oil refining process is very extensive in costs, with several operations that have the purpose of adapting the product to the necessary specifications in the market and having its profits fluctuating in a very volatile way, according to several factors that influence oil prices and its derivatives. This work aims to perform a study of the main costs involved in the oil refining process, analyzing the production units of a refinery, its main energy demands and operational expenses, thus being able to evaluate the impact that each production unit has on the fixed and variable costs within a plant. The study was carried out from available data from refineries in operation and cost research associated with the unit operations involved. From these costs and the prices of the commodities involved, which vary constantly, being traded on the stock exchanges, it was defined the refining margin of a Brazilian refinery, chosen as a model, in certain historical periods and was verified which production units had the greatest impact on costs. With the methodology used, it was possible to observe that the atmospheric distillation and catalytic cracking were the most expensive units, also finding the high impact that raw material costs had in the historical period, being the main costs of the studied refinery.