On average, what percentage of gasoline can be refined from a barrel of crude oil?

Hi Corkypq,

According to Platts.com, a Barrel is a volumetric unit of measurement
for crude oil and petroleum products. Based on the two references
below, there are 42 U.S. gallons in a barrel of oil:

Platts Global Energy
Glossary -- Barrel
http://www.platts.com/features/gasoline/glossary.shtml

California Energy Commission Update:
Gasoline Supplies and Prices in California 
http://www.energy.ca.gov/releases/2000_releases/2000-07-12_gasoline_report.html


Based on "Life Barrel of Oil: Facts About Oil", published by the
American Petroleum Institute, there are 19.4 gallons per Barrel of
crude oil:

View in HTML
http://216.239.33.100/search?q=cache:LcSJF01XCBQC:www.classroom-energy.org/teachers/oilfacts.pdf+average+gasoline+%22barrel+of+oil%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
View in PDF (You can download the file by right-clicking on the link
and choosing "Save Target As...")
http://www.classroom-energy.org/teachers/oilfacts.pdf

Based on the references above:

19.4 ÷ 42 x 100 = 46.2 (46.1904761904761904761904761904762)

46.2 percent of a barrel of oil can be made into gasoline.

However, some sources say that a barrel yields 19.5 - 20 gallons of
gasoline.

An example:
U.S. Geological Survey
Zeolites, by Robert L. Virta (20 gallons of gasoline per barrel)
View in HTML
http://216.239.33.100/search?q=cache:8s717Lq2JBcC:minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/zeolites/zeomyb01.pdf+%22gallons+of+gasoline+per+barrel%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
View in PDF
http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/zeolites/zeomyb01.pdf

Hence, given these info:

19.4 + 19.5 + 20 = 58.9

58.9 ÷ 3 = 19.6 gallons of gasoline per barrel (average)

19.63 ÷ 42 x 100 = 46.7 (46.7380952380952380952380952380952)

46.7 percent of a barrel of oil can be made into gasoline (average)


In case you want to know more, you can search through the results of
the last links below.

Search strategy:

"gallons in a barrel"
://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&newwindow=1&safe=off&q=%22gallons+in+a+barrel%22

"gallons of gasoline per barrel"
://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&newwindow=1&safe=off&q=%22gallons+of+gasoline+per+barrel%22

average gasoline "barrel of oil"
://www.google.com/search?q=average+gasoline+%22barrel+of+oil%22&sa=Google+Search&cat=&hl=en

I hope this helps you. Should you have any comments/questions, please
feel free to post your clarification before rating this and I'll
attend to you as soon as possible. Thanks for asking.

Best regards,
Feilong

very complete, just what I was looking for.

As an interesting related note, oil refining is one of the only
processes where you end up with more than you started.  Crude oil is
processed into a variety of end products which have more mass than the
oil they started out with.

Thanks Corkypq. I really appreciate the high rating.

Thanks Jonmm for adding additional info to my answer.