Pipeline physics astound me: the same single pipe can be used for a series of different products with only a small boundary volume between them needing to be diverted [0]. As a naive software guy I would have feared that across 170km and numerous valves and pumps cross-contamination would become problematic, but apparently not so (plus the definition of the fuel types had greater tolerances than laboratory-grade chemicals)
When you see a flare stack like this [1] running 24x7, wasting enough energy for a small town, you realise quite how cheap energy is to an energy company. It simply isn't worth doing anything about those losses when instead they can work on building another bigger refinery.
