Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Chevron, Shell, Conoco and...

Being from Texas City, I would have expected more insight.
But maybe the size of the industry in your back yard has clouded your vision.

There are actually small company and co-op owned refineries.

Also, the base gasoline one buys usually comes from a distribution point.
Product is pumped into multiple million gallon tanks from all involved refineries, it mixes.

When its loaded into a truck, the gas comes out of the pooled supply.
The purchase is from the chosen oil company, and can also be branded or unbranded.

So, if I am loading my truck, I hook up the hoses.
Tell the computer what company i wish to buy from, and branded/unbranded.
The base gas will be exactly the same, no matter what.
However, as the gas is pumped into my truck, a custom additive package is
injected into it. Different companies, different additives.

Unbranded gasoline, a cheaper package.
It is definately a cheaper product.

The question however is this.

Is the branded gas a Chevy/Ford or a Rolls Royce?
Or is the unbranded a Chevy or Yugo?

It may or may not be a quality product that will provide good service.
Either by the tankfull, or over a long time.
I prefer to buy top tier gas. It's a known product.
I do buy off brand sometimes, mixed results.
Never a real problem.

There is one exception. BP (Amoco) pays extra to have their Ultimate 93 shipped through the pipeline separately. It is NOT the same.

Most of my vehicles require premium gas. I tend to buy from the majors.

That is oversimplification......... It never happens "separately".

All refined products are batched by grade and type through a product pipeline into separate tankage to keep the products segregated by grade and type. Each batch typically has buffers between it and the next batched product. A buffer can be a pipeline pig that actually separates the batched fuels or it can be a blend of the two batches that gets sent to a separate tank for buffers in some cases, or it an be sent to a tank where no degredation of one product occurs. For example if you have 89 octane batched up against an 87 octane (for illustrative purposes only), the natural mixing between the two that occurs in the pipeline (the buffer), will go into the 87 octane tank. This keeps the higher octane gas "pure" and it adds ever so slightly to the lower grade octane rating in the 87 octane tank.

The only thing distinguishing Conoco gas from Shell gas of a certain grade (ie. 87 octane) is the additive package added to the fuel as its loaded onto a truck for distribution to a gasoline station. If the gas goes to a Conoco station, it gets the Conoco additives..........if it goes to a Shell station it gets the Shell additives. All done by key-card computer selections at loading.

Cheap gas going to an unbranded station comes from the same tank as does the name brand gas and likely the cheap gas has an additive package added at loading that meets some minimum individual state requirements for "clean burning" gasoline.

https://pipeline101.com/How-Do-Pipelines-Work/What-Is-Batching

That’s pretty much how it works. Hasbeen

So, bottom line is, would I be better off continuing to get my gas at Costco or should I go to Shell, Sunoco, Exxon??

Gasoline is blended to meet octane numbers. Plus there is a couple of dozen specs. Each depends on summer or winter plus altitude.
Now that gasoline receives the additives at distribution. Most find the majors have better additives. Means better gas mileage.
Hasbeen

Can't remember who exactly told me this, but an operator at the Amoco TC refinery said all of the gasoline produced at that refinery was shipped on pipeline out of state.

Long as they got beer, blunts and nightcrawlers. The battlestar glactica dont give a fugg what octane.

Have known this all my life, but saved this quote from someone in the business years ago for each time this came up.

"I've been in the petroleum hauling business for over ten years now. We haul exclusively to one customer from various oil terminals in the Virginia/North Carolina area. I've been authorized to load at over a dozen terminals in a 300 mile radius in recent years. I occasionally still drive, but my normal job is dispatching ten tanker trucks to our area stations.

What I can tell you about "branded" gasoline is this: Sometimes it ain't what you think it is. And the additives which are put into the branded gasolines are added in such small amounts it may or may not have the advertised effects on your engine/fuel system.

Of course the states regulate the octane advertised on the pumps, but no agency (to my knowledge) ever checks for the additives which are purported to be present in the branded gasolines.

It then becomes possible for branded stations to sell gasoline which doesn't have the additives that the signs and commercials say that it has. This can occur when the additive injector system fails at the loading terminal, or when the terminal runs out of an additive.

Additives in gasoline are just like additives in oil; they are "added" to the base product. All gas begins as pretty much the same stuff. Regular unlead and premium for all oil terminals in a given area comes up the same pipeline. We pull off of Colonial Pipeline in this area, and a small bit off a branch pipeline called Plantation Pipeline. When Citgo, Chevron, Conoco, Amoco, Texaco, Shell, and the rest fill their huge terminal storage tanks the gas comes off the same pipeline at pretty much the same time. There is one exception: Amoco Ultimate Premium is refined an extra step, and it comes up the pipeline all by itself. Other company's 93 octane premium fuels (I don't know anything about Sunoco fuels as they aren't distributed in my area) are the same before the additives are injected into the gasoline when it is being loaded onto the transport tanker"

I'm familiar with both Colonial and Plantation Pipelines. So you are saying that BP has a dedicated 93 octane gas pipeline somewhere? Or are you simply saying that it is batched and goes into one specific terminal and tank in that terminal? With today's technology which specifically controls the amounts and type of additive going into a certain grade and brand of gas a a distribution terminal, having a dedicated pipeline for only one fuel grade is major overkill and does nothing to insure a better grade of gasoline than what the next guy is selling..

Good for BP........... And good for the knowledge put forth by your truck driver friend. Gasoline distribution truck drivers are generally known for superior intelligence about the products they haul..............

As for "small amounts" of additives added at loading, it is regulated to keep all trucks going to a certain branded station the same and it is injected in computer controlled amounts that meet the spec for the specific grade and brand of gasoline being sent to a specific branded station. To do otherwise is fraud. And adding "more" additive than required does not equate to "better" gasoline. And as an aside, the manual dumping of a can of additive into a tank truck as often happened in yesteryear along the east coast is no longer allowed. That's not to say it doesn't still happen with a mom and pop operation somewhere.........

100% correct. I've been selling fuel for 25 years, pulling product from several different terminals and refineries. It's the same protocol everywhere.

Amoco 93 is batched and stored separately. And if my memory is correct, delivered to thee
truck in a dedicated arm. They pulled out of here 10 years ago.

As for injector failures, when that happens the line that incurs failure stops.
I mean it stops, right, F'n, BANG, now. At our local rack, the delivery rate is around
600gal/min. When that 5 Inch line slams to a stop, it will make you jump.
And there isn't any restarting it until the maintenance people fix it.
Most racks have 3 arms for running gasoline. If you have a failure, you usually
note what was delivered, then program another arm to give you the balance.

At least we do. Our company lets us do our jobs. Some control all aspects
of their drivers, they have a harder time with these things.

PS. Don't ever think you know beyond any doubt what you are pumping.
Many outfits haul for multiple brands, and even more also haul unbranded.

I have known of branded gas sold as unbranded, and the reverse.
Based on the daily price, and the ability to properly shuffle the paper.

Some oil companies will allow you to just load branded gas,
others require the specific station that is getting that gas.
This mostly prevents games. Since BOL numbers and quantities must
match pickup,drop, and store inventory documents.

Most diesel is unbranded. Look at the pumps sometime. They often are painted
company colors, but don't have an oil company logo.

Which is why these branded sellers have a "marker" in their branded fuel. This obviously allows them to know if a branded marketer is selling unbranded fuel when they're not allowed to.