Ever wondered how much energy (electricity, natural gas, etc) it takes to power U.S. refineries? It may astonish you. The data I'm using is from 2008, the most recent year that has complete data available. I've processed the data, researched prices, and calculated the costs involved.

In 2008, there were a total of 146 refineries in the United States that were operable, with four idle facilities. I will only concentrate on the operable refineries, as the idle facilities did not produce any product, but may have required energy.

According to the Department of Energy, the 146 refineries consumed the following in 2008:
98,769,000,000 pounds (44,895,000,000kg) of purchased steam (steam that is not produced by the refiner, but bought)
42,682,000,000 kWh of electricity
86,000 pounds of coal
710,500,000,000 cubic feet of natural gas
237,161 barrels of still gas
81,811 barrels of petroleum coke

Of note: liquefied petroleum gases and heavy fuel oil were also used, but not calculated as their use at U.S. refiners amounted to less than 6,000 barrels.

Based on the usage provided by the DOE, I've calculated the costs for some of the above:
Cost of steam $927,440,910 (value based on the fuel needed to produce steam, this figure may vary)
Cost of electricity $29,706,672,000 (based on rolling average of 6.96 cents per kWh through 10/09)
Cost of coal $2,322 (based on Northern Appalachia, 13000 BTU, 2007 DOE)
Cost of natural gas $6,806,590,000 (based on '08 average industrial cost, $9.58/1000 cubic feet)
Cost of still gas and petroleum coke varies widely and there is no solid data available for this use.
Rough cost for energy across 146 refineries for 2008: $37,440,705,232 ($37.44 billion)

This amounts to an average of $256.44 million per refinery, per year. Obviously the largest refinery will be much higher and the smallest refinery will be much lower.

How about some interesting comparisons? Using the energy consumed by the 146 refineries, you could alternatively power 45.6 million homes with electricity for one year (based on DOE 2007 average of 936kWh/household) and you could provide natural gas to heat 10.2 million average homes for the entire year! (based on DOE average use per household in 2008)

Ultimately, the 146 refiners have a capacity of 17.23 million barrels per day. Using the math above based on total cost per day, I divided by the number of barrels of capacity and came up with $5.955 as a cost of energy to refine each barrel of capacity. In the end it costs 14 cents per gallon to refine the oil into that product.

What do you think about the amount of energy that goes into refining crude oil? Higher than expected? Lower than expected?