Company: PAGP
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001581990-25-000006
Chunk: 371

Company: PLAINS GP HOLDINGS LP
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1
Chunk 371
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 of ContentsIndex to Financial Statements

Following is a description of the activities and assets for each of our segments.

Crude Oil Segment 

Crude Oil Market and Business Overview

Crude oil is a global commodity that serves as feedstock for many of the world’s essential refined products such as transportation fuels (gasoline, diesel, jet fuel) and heating oil, among others. While commodities are typically considered unspecialized, mass-produced and fungible, crude oil is neither unspecialized nor fungible. The crude slate available to North American and world-wide refineries consists of a substantial number of different grades and varieties. Each crude oil grade has distinguishing physical properties. For example, specific gravity (generally referred to as light or heavy), sulfur content (generally referred to as sweet or sour) and metals content, along with other characteristics, collectively result in varying economic attributes of a particular grade or type of crude oil. In many cases, these factors result in the need for such grades to be batched or segregated in the transportation and storage processes, blended to precise specifications or adjusted in value.

The lack of fungibility of the various grades of crude oil can create logistical transportation, terminalling and storage challenges and inefficiencies associated with regional volumetric supply and demand imbalances. These logistical inefficiencies are created as certain qualities of crude oil are indigenous to particular regions or countries. Also, each refinery has a distinct configuration of process units designed to handle particular grades of crude oil. The relative yields and the cost to obtain, transport and process the crude oil, combined with the value of finished goods created, drive a refinery’s choice of feedstock. 

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Table of ContentsIndex to Financial Statements

Our business model integrates large-scale supply aggregation capabilities with the ownership and operation of critical infrastructure systems that connect major producing regions (supply) to key demand centers (refineries) and export terminals. Our assets and our business strategy are designed to serve our producer and refiner customers by addressing regional crude oil supply and demand imbalances that exist in the United States and Canada. The nature and extent of supply and demand imbalances change from time to time as a result of a variety of factors, including global demand for exports; regional production declines and/or increases; refinery expansions, modifications and shut-downs; available transportation and storage capacity; and government mandates and related regulatory factors.

Our Crude Oil segment operations generally consist of gathering and transporting crude oil using pipelines (including gathering systems), trucks and, at times, on barges or railcars, in addition