# Cracking oil
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cracking-oil/354111
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [April 25, 2006, 7:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cracking-oil/354111 "2006-04-25T07:38:47Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)
#### Post date: [April 25, 2006, 7:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cracking-oil/354111/1 "2006-04-25T07:38:47Z")
I know that different types of oil have different breakdowns in the fuels they provide, but as a rough guide let say I have some barrels of sweet crude. What would be the percentages of the oil that would be made into gasoline, fuel oil, propane, benzene, etc.
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### Author:  [@Waterman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Waterman)
#### Post date: [April 25, 2006, 8:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cracking-oil/354111/2 "2006-04-25T08:10:19Z")
Unless I am forgetting my college Ch.E. courses (which is possible since it has been over 35 years), there are two factors to consider in answering your question:[ol]
[li]The source of the crude oil since the chemical composition varies by location.[/li][li]The exact temperatures, pressures, etc used in the catalytic cracking process which has the ability to alter the hydrocarbon chain lengths and thus the mix obtained.[/li][/ol]
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### Author:  [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paul_in_Qatar)
#### Post date: [April 25, 2006, 8:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cracking-oil/354111/3 "2006-04-25T08:44:55Z")
There can be no real answer to your question. The stuff we lump together as ‘crude oil’ varies widely from place to place and even over time from a single field.
Some Asian crudes are so light and sweet you can burn them (after a fashion) in a turbine engine right from the cow (so to speak). The local oil here is very sour with sulfur and probably would not yield anything useful at all without some super chemistry types getting involved.
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### Author:  [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)
#### Post date: [April 26, 2006, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cracking-oil/354111/4 "2006-04-26T02:41:36Z")
I don’t have any chemical engineering background so I assumed the answer would be something like “gasoline is between 20% and 30% of a barrell of oil depending on where it is from and cracking techniques”.
Perhaps I should ask this as an emperical question. What percentage of the world’s oil is converted into gasoline?
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### Author:  [@Duckster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duckster)
#### Post date: [April 26, 2006, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cracking-oil/354111/5 "2006-04-26T03:43:33Z")
[How Oil Refining Works](http://www.howstuffworks.com/oil-refining.htm)
[Wikipedia article](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_refinery)
[Gasoline FAQs](http://www.faqs.org/faqs/autos/gasoline-faq/)
I could not find oil refining percentages.