A refiner is a company that turns crude oil into finished products like gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel.
Crude oil pumped from the ground is not usable fuel. A refiner runs it through a refinery, where heat and processing separate and convert the crude into the products the market wants: gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, heating oil, and more. The refiner is where raw crude becomes the fuel everyone downstream buys and sells.
It sits at the top of the supply chain. The refiner’s output feeds the pipelines, vessels, and terminals that move and store fuel in bulk, and from there it flows to jobbers, dealers, and finally the pump. Every party further down is, in the end, moving and reselling what a refiner first produced.
For a jobber or marketer, the refiner is the ultimate source of supply and often the party behind a brand. A branded supply contract traces back to a refiner’s product and additive, and the rack price a jobber pays each morning starts from what refiners are charging for their output that day.
In useThe refiner turns a barrel of crude into gasoline and diesel, sends it to the terminal by pipeline, and from there the jobber loads it and hauls it to local stations.
See also Supplier, Terminal, Blender