Oil Refinery
Categories: Company Management
It comes from the ground as dead dinosaur goop. It’s dirty. Muddy. Tarry. Remnants of Jimmy Hoffa’s bones in it.
You can’t put that stuff in your car. It has to be, um, refined. Kinda like the writers here at Shmoop Central. Um, yeah.
But that's pretty much it. An oil refinery takes very muddy-looking oil filtered through thin mesh netting and then does a bunch of other things to it to make it conform to tight standards of chemical balance, so that a gallon of Premium Unleaded is pretty much the same in Miami as it is in Seattle as it is in Dallas.
Kinda like Big Macs. Only smoother going down.
![](https://media1.shmoop.com/images/finance-glossary/oil%20rig.jpg)