The global refining disorder: The political geography of crude processing

Why are refineries where they are, and what forces explain their distribution across planetary space? This article develops the concept of the Global Refining Disorder (GRD) to analyze the political geography of crude oil processing. Departing from location theory, which privileges transport-cost minimization, we argue that refinery siting is determined by the interplay of national strategies, security regimes, postcolonial legacies, and economies of scale. We identify two ideal types of refining political economy — the mercantile pump , which concentrates processing capacity near centers of power and imports crude from peripheries, and the developmental syringe , which locates refining near extraction sites to stimulate peripheral growth. Working across five comparative cases – the United States, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, and Nigeria – we analyze the transportation triangles shaped by oil fields, refineries, and consumers of fuel. To operationalize these carbon flows, we calculate two derived measures — refining lag and the export-to-refining ratio . With the concept of securitization of scalability , we explain how economies of scale generate systemic vulnerability of refineries. Recent events in Ukraine and Iran empirically demonstrate that refineries constitute the most vulnerable component of the global energy system. Looking forward, we argue that the path from refining to circularity secures decentralization of energy supply, with political choice — rather than geological endowment or market signals — remaining the decisive variable in transition.