Oil and Natural Gas Refining

Refining is one of the downstream activities. This term encompasses, essentially, oil refining, natural gas treatment, and derivatives transportation and trading/distribution.

Turning crude oil into products that are essential for your daily life. Here at Petrobras, we aim to increase the refineries' production capacity to meet the growing demand for derivatives. But that is not all. We want to produce more, and we seek for new products.

We developed proprietary technology to process our domestic oil, which is heavier. The outcome of this is that we obtain a higher percentage of noble products coming from our refineries. We have reduced our dependency on imports and increased profitability.

The main products that come out of our refineries are diesel fuel, liquefied petroleum gas, gasoline, lubricants, naphtha, fuel oil, and aviation fuel.

The 2007 consolidated numbers showed the increase in domestic oil production: our 11 refineries produced some 1.8 million barrels of derivatives per day. We also invested in new units and technological improvements.

Among the new technologies, we pioneered the development of HBio. This process represented progress in diesel fuel quality and in environmental protection. Including vegetable oil in diesel fuel results in a high-purity product.

The integrated performance of the downstream activities is a fundamental premise to consolidate our strategic objectives.