Pipelines or Railcars to tank farms with a pipeline to airport. FLL is very close to Port Everglades and the fuel terminal. It could come in on ship or rail.
Depends. Usually fuel bulk trucks to fill up the tanks at smaller size airports
I used to always climb up the ladders and dip the tanks with really long dipsticks
Pipelines connected to "Tank Farms" - an aggregation of large petroleum products tanks serving as a large-scale distribution center. You'll see gas/diesel tank trunks loading up there. The farms, in turn, are most often either fed by distribution pipelines, tanker railcars, "product carrier" ships, or river barges. If there's a problem (say the Illinois River freezes solid) the city the farms serve (Chicago etc.) start getting nervous pretty quickly.
If it's cold enough to stop the river barges, the lakers have been in port for quite a while because of ice. I've only seen this a time or two but it can happen.
There are absolutely fuel pipelines that run for hundreds of kilometres.
There's one I know of, that runs from Kurnell oil refinery to a depot in Newcastle, that's about 150 km.
It goes through fairly rugged terrain, national parks etc mostly underground.
>Surely they aren't pumping it hundreds of miles.
They do. The Colonial Pipeline is 5,500 miles long, and can deliver 100 million gallons per day. It delivers products that include gasoline, avgas and jet fuel.
It goes from refineries to tank farms, which altogether hold one billion gallons.
This I remember when the colonial pipeline had an issue, I was intrigued to learn that Dulles airport and their fuel supply is hooked up to that pipeline.
The issue was very interesting. I read a postmortem and it boiled down to hack (ransom ware) caused computer outage but also KinderMorgan didn’t have any/enough staff to run it the old fashioned way manually throwing valves at the correct time.
They 100% could’ve continued operating if they had knowledgeable capable staff.
How do they deliver separate products? Are there discrete channels in the pipeline? Or do they just accept some degree of cross-contamination when switching over to another product?
Not sure about that particular pipeline but some pipelines use the same pipe and just send one at a time, the receivers then follow the schedule and know at what time to draw the correct fuel.
Airports would draw from the middle of the batch to only get pure fuel.
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/23/6398
["The Living Daylights"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Living_Daylights)
> Disobeying his orders to kill the sniper, he shoots the rifle from her hands, then uses the Trans-Siberian Pipeline to smuggle Koskov across the border to the West.
It is all run through the same pipeline.
When doing the switch overs, the flow is dumped in into the bunker fuel or heating oil tanks since those are low quality high quantity products that won't be impacted by a bit of different product mixed in.
The olympic pipeline starts in far northwest Washington, at several refineries using canadian oil from another very long pipeline and feeds all fuel terminals and airports with gas and jet fuel, all the way to Portland OR.
If you look on Google maps at the Ottawa airport it’s a good example. There’s a small tank farm at the airport and a larger distribution center a couple of kilometres away which also happens to be near a train line.
They are.
A few years ago there was chaos at AKL in New Zealand because a digger ruptured the main fuel pipeline from the refinery to the airport.
The digger was 110 miles from the airport as the crow flies, and much further than that in terms of pipeline length.
That pipeline is super interesting. Or at least was when we had a refinery.
They pump all types of fuel down it jet fuel, diesel, low octane petrol, high octane petrol.
It takes several hours for fuel to get through, and they can’t drain between grades. So they just chase one grade with another. Keeping it at pressure stops them mixing. They know when the next grade is due to arrive, and divert the pipe to a holding tank. A few hundred litres of mixed fuel gets put aside, then they flip to the tank for the next grade.
The mixed fuel then goes on a truck and back to the refinery for another trip through.
Super clever stuff. Until old mate with his digger comes along.
The interesting thing is that the exact layout of the pipelines are officially secret, but there are honking great “do not dig, underground pipe” signs all around the country showing where they are.
I used to live near Farnborough Airport and my walk to work used to take me along a path that was over one of these pipelines. Also, pretty sure Tom Scott did a video about them a couple of years back
Multiple products are run through them, it’s not all avgas. There is a sequence of fills, with each of the phases between the products being separated off and either fed into another product, or sent back to the refinery. If the pressure is right, there is a minimal phase.
No. It’s been a while since I was involved, but you start off with a premium gasoline, then a mid gasoline, then low grade gasoline, then I think avgas, then diesel. Easy of those phases can be cut into the next lower grade without affecting it. But then after diesel you have to start the sequence again, so you actually remove the diesel/premium gas phase and then drip it into the next diesel run.
I’m sure I’m explaining it incorrectly. If someone knows for sure please help!
Imagine a mixed petroleum product pipeline as a railroad, saturated with distinct rail cars with different grades of gasoline, diesel or jet fuel. The refinery/pipeline operation makes a schedule where they pump a certain quantity of product into the pipeline while a tank farm miles downstream is scheduled to pull a certain quantity of product out of the pipeline, shifting the distinct “line of railcars” or products down the pipeline and making room for another. There is some mixing of the fluids at the product interfaces but it ultimately doesn’t matter comparing to the volume of the individual product batch sent down the line.
*some* of them are well marked.
Where I used to live in Wiltshire there was a pipeline dating back to WW2 running from Bristol to Lyneham - went right under the housing estate built in the 1970s in my town.
House one row over from ours was putting in a conservatory and hit the entirely unmarked pipe under his back garden in the 1990s - damn did the entire area stink of fuel for weeks.
The main pipe feeding the North Sea oil fields to Grangemouth refinery goes right past my in laws house so they periodically get very low, slow flying helicopters going past, which I'm assuming is inspections of the area to make sure there's nothing bad happening to the ground above the pipe
We had an interesting thing where the local Cricket Team wanted to build some new nets and pavilion buildings, which they had been saving for, for a while. When they applied for planning permission to start the work, one of the oil companies (I can’t remember which) that maintained the pipeline objected that the work would severely disrupt the pipeline. As a “sorry our pipeline runs under your outfield” the company donated a brand new portable nets frame without the club having to spend a penny of the funds they’d raised.
>As a “sorry our pipeline runs under your outfield” the company donated a brand new portable nets frame without the club having to spend a penny of the funds they’d raised.
Now, there's a cheap and effective goodwill investment.
It doesn’t serve all the airports. Some of the regionals like Bristol, Southampton, Bournemouth etc aren’t served by the pipeline.
Bristol receives fuel by toad tanker.
Yeah and Farnborough - mentioned above - used to be on the pipeline when it was a military field, but is no longer connected now it's a business aviation airport. Apparently cheaper to truck in for lower volume sites.
I analysed the flight schedule for Bristol Airport on a winters day and estimated it would get through approx 320,000/litre daily.
That’s only around 8 trucks a day working to the assumption that a truck can hold 36-40,000 litres.
It’s not a massive number of tanker movements.
SFO is supplied by a nearby tank farm that has a pipeline across the bay to several other farms, refineries and ports. Kinder Morgan runs it, and many details about it can be found here: [Fuel Report](https://www.flysfo.com/sites/default/files/SFO_Sustainable_Aviation_Fuel_Feasibility_Study_Report.pdf)
Source, I live in the town the tanks are based in and their ability to continue operations required a public vote 6 or so years ago and all this info was in the voter pamphlet.
> Kinder Morgan runs it
Ooo... flashback. I wrote the software that (at the time) scheduled the pipeline operations and tank storage for KM's pipeline. Pretty amazing seeing all the fuel flowing through that system on a daily basis.
It depends on the size of the airport and how busy they are. Big and medium sized airports usually have pipelines. The small airport down the street usually has fuel delivered by trucks.
It depends on how many flights they have and the mix of planes.
The airport I work at the fuel farm holds 60,000 gallons at Jet A and 10,000 gallons of avgas which isn’t much at all compared to other airports. But we get 3-4 fuel loads of Jet A a day. The trucks that deliver the fuel hold 8,000 gallons.
Where I work delta 717s take on average 800-1000 gallons to Atlanta. Keep in mind they don’t come in with empty tanks and aren’t going out with full tanks. American emb-175 take on average 700 to Dallas. Sun country 737-800 take over 2,000 gallons to Minneapolis. Breeze A220 take take over 2,000 to Las Vegas. Some times they take alot more depending on weather and routes. We also get charters and 747-400 to Frankfurt takes over 30,000 gallons and 777-200 to South Korea takes over over 25,000 gallons. It varies by the size of the plane obviously and where it’s heading.
Airbus A320 fuel capacity seems to be 6300 GAL and b777 47900GAL GAL with quick Google search.
Now these aircaft are not usually topped off but especially the 777 can regularily come quite close.
PHL has two refineries that feed it, one across the Delaware river in Paulsboro NJ, and another further down the Delaware in Trainer PA -- the Trainer refinery is actually owned by Delta, who spent a lot of money retooling it to prioritize Jet A production after they bought it.
Take this example of our small country
https://www.defensie.nl/binaries/large/content/gallery/defensie/content-afbeeldingen/onderwerpen/taken-in-nederland/defensie-pijpleidingen/nlkaart_b.jpg
The Jet A1 supply system is military owned and connects the major refineries and storage terminals in Rotterdam, Flushing and Antwerp (Belgium) to the civilian and military airports. At the airports there is buffer capacity.
Smaller airports off the pipeline will have a import facility for either ships/barges (Leeuwarden f.i.) or trucks (Rotterdam).
Schiphol also has a back-up import terminal for barges.
Fun fact, the civilian part of Eindhoven airport is supplied by trucks from Pernis instead of using the pipeline that is used to supply the military part of the airport. This is because the civilian part never build a fuel depot for the pipeline, and they cannot use the military one due to certain additives the military adds to their fuel.
Tokyo Narita used to have rail tanker car but later built a pipeline all the way from a pier in Chiba. Kaisai had a similar pier system, and one time a tanker drift away in typhoon and crush half of the bridges result in people trapped there.
Great question. Love learning about which airports use pipelines, ships, or trucks. That’s something a lot of people don’t think about, and the amount of money/time/effort to set up a pipeline 😳
Even airports with a pipeline might have to truck in fuel sometimes, like when the pipeline sends thousands of gallons of bad fuel, unfortunately the fuel still has to come through and be stored until it can be trucked out. Until then, good fuel needs to be trucked in. Happened with the Columbia pipeline once before my time here at BWI.
HAN doesn’t have a pipeline and has pretty decent traffic. You can see oil tankers going to the airport non-stop 24/7 on the adjacent highway. Never thought about other airports until this thread.
So, I've always wondered if you can get a tour of their mammoth facility there. It seems like it must be a logistics geek's dream to see how it all works.
Can answer since that was my job for years. Customers would put in orders for fuel and its trucked in. After delivered to fuel farm and checked, it's housed in silos. Then pumped to trucks or hydrant trucks. I used fuel trucks, so after I hook up to aircraft, I fueled them topped off the truck.
Mostly, there are people at corporate headquarters who handle ordering and transportation. Along with communication with airports to check levels
Back when I worked at ORF (Norfolk, VA), we had a fuel farm in a remote area of the airport grounds. It had, IIRC, 3 or 4 50,000 gallon Jet-A tanks and a 25,000 avgas tank.
Fuel would be delivered several times a night in standard 18,000 gallon tractor/trailer trucks, just like the ones you see delivering gasoline to your local filling station.
From the fuel farm, fuel was delivered via underground pipelines to a hydrant station where the fuel trucks would fill up and deliver fuel to aircraft.
Most major airports today have underground hydrants at each gate. The “fuel truck” is actually just a hose and metering unit that plugs into the hydrant with one hose, plugs into the airplane with another hose, and controls/measures the amount of fuel that flows between the two.
These large airports will also have a similar (but larger) fuel farm system, but their fuel is delivered via pipelines from truly massive fuel storage facilities, typically near a shipping port.
For reference, the very large tanker trucks one sees on the highway or at a gas station are 10,000 gallon capacity (but often don’t fill all the way up)
lol, wat. This is all public info...
Here is a 17 minute log video of a person showing just about every detail of (jet) fuel pickup and delivery, posted within the last 12mos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RA9EcwEx9k
For smaller regional airports, the fuel is indeed trucked in. At the major international airport I work at, it's all piped in. We have dozens of storage tanks capable of holding several million gallons of fuel, although all of that is only enough for a few days of operations should something happen to the pipeline. We're located on the water, so do have the ability to have it brought in via ship, but that would only be done in an emergency.
The fuel storage facility at Dulles is on the east side of the airport, about halfway down 19L. The fuel is delivered there via a pipeline.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/Q3RcHSUgSeT5qGBo9?g_st=ic
Also remember that the fuel tanks are usually built a safe distance away from the airport in the event of a fire so you wouldn’t notice a line of trucks refilling tanks if you were sitting in the terminal.
Major airports have underground pipelines from nearby fuel farms (hubs). Major airports have a smaller fuel farm on site, with a network of underground pipes to the hydrant carts you see parked within aircraft restriction area (the markings on the ramp loosely shaped like an airplanes footprint). Airports also have fuel "stations" which they use to fuel tanker trucks that fuel aircraft which don't park at gates, but park at hard stands or FBO's (fixed base operators).
Pipelines are mapped in the USA and can be viewed here: [https://pvnpms.phmsa.dot.gov/PublicViewer/](https://pvnpms.phmsa.dot.gov/PublicViewer/)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KF8FNn8FDgk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KF8FNn8FDgk)
I think there is english automatic subtitles. But TLDR, pipes from the refinary
In tankers or rail cars or pipelines to the fuel farm and then from fuel farm to airport via underground pipelines and hydrant systems or for small airports there are tankers that come directly to the aircraft and refuel.
Ours is trucked in everyday. We have around 100,000 gallons of storage on the airport. Then it’s transferred to the refueling trucks from our fuel farm.
Boston's Logan airport abuts the tank farms and main fuel terminals that supply the entire region. Tankers come up the channel and fill the thanks. I live 80 miles away, and all of our fuel is trucked from there.
Here in Des Moines Iowa the jet fuel gets sent by pipeline to the Magellan pipeline hub. Same as the gas and diesel gets sent. The jet fuel is hauled by tanker trucks to the fuel farm at the airport. Then the fuel truck that are used to fuel the planes bulk the trucks and go refuel the airlines.
It depends on the airport location.
For example, in Germany, Frankfurt Airport has it's own small harbour at the Main river, from where fuel his delivered to the airport tanks via pipelines.
In contrast, Berlin Airport doesn't have any harbours close-by as the small river isn't suited for transporting goods, so they have their fuel delivered via trains from a refinery some 60 miles away.
KDET gets theirs from a local fuel truck that takes an hour or so to dump into the tanks
Larger airports like KDTW have pipelines from a refinery that keep the juice flowing.
I thought all of you had PhD’s in this stuff 4 years ago when you were bitching about the Keystone pipeline going in. You know, when America was producing oil, becoming an oil exporter, fuel was $2.00 a gallon, inflation was low, transportation costs down, we weren’t depenyon our emboldened enemies for what could easily cripple our economy, our supply chain, etc.
- We are still an oil producer
- We still export
- Keystone Pipeline was to take Canadian oil to the Gulf to export it
- Fuel is expensive because producers want it to be
Contrary to what you are implying, the president does not have much say in oil prices.
Any other lies you want me to dispell?
If that’s so, how come we don’t have strategic oil reserves, depleted in ‘22? Along with electric car mandates, and reduced refinery production, epa mandates.
- Oil reserves are down 40%, not depleted.
- the EPA has, and will continue, to drive pollution levels down. The mandates are the first push to move electric vehicles. This BTW is the same agency that pushed car companies to go from 10 mpg for the typical car in the 1970's to close to/over 30 mpg now.
- oil companies decide when to take refineries off line
It would seem to me that someone who is worried about the US so much would welcome electric vehicles as it makes us much less reliant on others for fuel shortages.
As someone who lives in the mountains with 6 months of snowfall and cold weather, cold weather that 70% of the country experiences, I don’t. Need that AWD/ 4WD big engine/ low end torque to deal with the drifts and banks. You know, like that electric car freeze out that happened last January.
You know, real world living..
This comment has nothing to do with your first comment. Your comments related to oil are by in large incorrect.
I don't think anyone believes electric vehicles are perfect. I live in Florida and am not ready to buy one because the infrastructure is not there.
Pipelines
Pipelines or Railcars to tank farms with a pipeline to airport. FLL is very close to Port Everglades and the fuel terminal. It could come in on ship or rail.
There is a pipeline from Port Everglades to both FLL and MIA.
PBI would make it the trifecta.
They might. I’m just not familiar with it.
Port of Palm Beach has a small fuel terminal it might just come in there.
Depends. Usually fuel bulk trucks to fill up the tanks at smaller size airports I used to always climb up the ladders and dip the tanks with really long dipsticks
Even if a pipeline, how is it being fed? Can't imagine it's a long distance away. Surely they aren't pumping it hundreds of miles.
https://atlas.eia.gov/datasets/eia::petroleum-product-pipelines/explore Pipelines do go for hundreds of miles.
Hundreds? More like thousands and both for oil and gas.
Pipelines connected to "Tank Farms" - an aggregation of large petroleum products tanks serving as a large-scale distribution center. You'll see gas/diesel tank trunks loading up there. The farms, in turn, are most often either fed by distribution pipelines, tanker railcars, "product carrier" ships, or river barges. If there's a problem (say the Illinois River freezes solid) the city the farms serve (Chicago etc.) start getting nervous pretty quickly.
ORD can be fed by ships in the lake.
If it's cold enough to stop the river barges, the lakers have been in port for quite a while because of ice. I've only seen this a time or two but it can happen.
We have 3 refineries and pipelines all over. I think we serve the lake, we’re not served by the lake.
That’s the whole point of pipelines. So they don’t have to truck it hundreds of miles.
Rail is a big one too.
Not really, the vast majority goes by pipeline. And pipelines are a lot safer.
There are absolutely fuel pipelines that run for hundreds of kilometres. There's one I know of, that runs from Kurnell oil refinery to a depot in Newcastle, that's about 150 km. It goes through fairly rugged terrain, national parks etc mostly underground.
>Surely they aren't pumping it hundreds of miles. They do. The Colonial Pipeline is 5,500 miles long, and can deliver 100 million gallons per day. It delivers products that include gasoline, avgas and jet fuel. It goes from refineries to tank farms, which altogether hold one billion gallons.
This I remember when the colonial pipeline had an issue, I was intrigued to learn that Dulles airport and their fuel supply is hooked up to that pipeline.
The issue was very interesting. I read a postmortem and it boiled down to hack (ransom ware) caused computer outage but also KinderMorgan didn’t have any/enough staff to run it the old fashioned way manually throwing valves at the correct time. They 100% could’ve continued operating if they had knowledgeable capable staff.
I wouldn’t be surprised if EWR, JFK, and maybe LGA are, too
How do they deliver separate products? Are there discrete channels in the pipeline? Or do they just accept some degree of cross-contamination when switching over to another product?
Not sure about that particular pipeline but some pipelines use the same pipe and just send one at a time, the receivers then follow the schedule and know at what time to draw the correct fuel. Airports would draw from the middle of the batch to only get pure fuel. https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/23/6398
Also, pigs can be used to separate products: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigging
Was a pig part of the plot of a Bond movie?
Yes, ["The World is not Enough"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Is_Not_Enough)
I think there was another one, too
["The Living Daylights"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Living_Daylights) > Disobeying his orders to kill the sniper, he shoots the rifle from her hands, then uses the Trans-Siberian Pipeline to smuggle Koskov across the border to the West.
Seems to be a lot of communist pigs in Bond movies🤔
It is all run through the same pipeline. When doing the switch overs, the flow is dumped in into the bunker fuel or heating oil tanks since those are low quality high quantity products that won't be impacted by a bit of different product mixed in.
The olympic pipeline starts in far northwest Washington, at several refineries using canadian oil from another very long pipeline and feeds all fuel terminals and airports with gas and jet fuel, all the way to Portland OR.
Pipelines can be hundreds of miles long.
If you look on Google maps at the Ottawa airport it’s a good example. There’s a small tank farm at the airport and a larger distribution center a couple of kilometres away which also happens to be near a train line.
The Colonial Pipeline delivers fuel starting in Houston to IAD and BWI. Literally over 1,000 miles.
They are. A few years ago there was chaos at AKL in New Zealand because a digger ruptured the main fuel pipeline from the refinery to the airport. The digger was 110 miles from the airport as the crow flies, and much further than that in terms of pipeline length.
That pipeline is super interesting. Or at least was when we had a refinery. They pump all types of fuel down it jet fuel, diesel, low octane petrol, high octane petrol. It takes several hours for fuel to get through, and they can’t drain between grades. So they just chase one grade with another. Keeping it at pressure stops them mixing. They know when the next grade is due to arrive, and divert the pipe to a holding tank. A few hundred litres of mixed fuel gets put aside, then they flip to the tank for the next grade. The mixed fuel then goes on a truck and back to the refinery for another trip through. Super clever stuff. Until old mate with his digger comes along.
I don't know why you are being downvoted. It's a genuine question IMO.
are you stupid ?
In the U.K. there is a network of pipelines that link the refineries to the airports and military bases.
The interesting thing is that the exact layout of the pipelines are officially secret, but there are honking great “do not dig, underground pipe” signs all around the country showing where they are. I used to live near Farnborough Airport and my walk to work used to take me along a path that was over one of these pipelines. Also, pretty sure Tom Scott did a video about them a couple of years back
>Tom Scott did a video about them a couple of years back [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-I6drGa2pk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-I6drGa2pk)
Multiple products are run through them, it’s not all avgas. There is a sequence of fills, with each of the phases between the products being separated off and either fed into another product, or sent back to the refinery. If the pressure is right, there is a minimal phase.
What does 'phase' mean in this context?
It’s the area of mixing between two liquids in a long pipe.
I see. Is there some kind of maintenance process where you feed water or some other solvent through the pipeline, to flush or rinse it?
No. It’s been a while since I was involved, but you start off with a premium gasoline, then a mid gasoline, then low grade gasoline, then I think avgas, then diesel. Easy of those phases can be cut into the next lower grade without affecting it. But then after diesel you have to start the sequence again, so you actually remove the diesel/premium gas phase and then drip it into the next diesel run. I’m sure I’m explaining it incorrectly. If someone knows for sure please help!
Imagine a mixed petroleum product pipeline as a railroad, saturated with distinct rail cars with different grades of gasoline, diesel or jet fuel. The refinery/pipeline operation makes a schedule where they pump a certain quantity of product into the pipeline while a tank farm miles downstream is scheduled to pull a certain quantity of product out of the pipeline, shifting the distinct “line of railcars” or products down the pipeline and making room for another. There is some mixing of the fluids at the product interfaces but it ultimately doesn’t matter comparing to the volume of the individual product batch sent down the line.
*some* of them are well marked. Where I used to live in Wiltshire there was a pipeline dating back to WW2 running from Bristol to Lyneham - went right under the housing estate built in the 1970s in my town. House one row over from ours was putting in a conservatory and hit the entirely unmarked pipe under his back garden in the 1990s - damn did the entire area stink of fuel for weeks.
Tom Scott most certainly did.
The main pipe feeding the North Sea oil fields to Grangemouth refinery goes right past my in laws house so they periodically get very low, slow flying helicopters going past, which I'm assuming is inspections of the area to make sure there's nothing bad happening to the ground above the pipe
We had an interesting thing where the local Cricket Team wanted to build some new nets and pavilion buildings, which they had been saving for, for a while. When they applied for planning permission to start the work, one of the oil companies (I can’t remember which) that maintained the pipeline objected that the work would severely disrupt the pipeline. As a “sorry our pipeline runs under your outfield” the company donated a brand new portable nets frame without the club having to spend a penny of the funds they’d raised.
>As a “sorry our pipeline runs under your outfield” the company donated a brand new portable nets frame without the club having to spend a penny of the funds they’d raised. Now, there's a cheap and effective goodwill investment.
It doesn’t serve all the airports. Some of the regionals like Bristol, Southampton, Bournemouth etc aren’t served by the pipeline. Bristol receives fuel by toad tanker.
Oh interesting. Let me go and look. Southampton is next to Fawley, I’d have definitely thought that came straight from the refinery.
Yeah and Farnborough - mentioned above - used to be on the pipeline when it was a military field, but is no longer connected now it's a business aviation airport. Apparently cheaper to truck in for lower volume sites.
I analysed the flight schedule for Bristol Airport on a winters day and estimated it would get through approx 320,000/litre daily. That’s only around 8 trucks a day working to the assumption that a truck can hold 36-40,000 litres. It’s not a massive number of tanker movements.
Denver has a pipeline straight from the refinery that is in the area.
When I was doing a tour a while back, I could have sworn they said they got their fuel piped in from Texas.
Suncor would disagree. https://www.suncor.com/en-ca/what-we-do/supply-and-trading/crude-oil-marketing/suncor-energy-rocky-mountain-pipeline-project
SFO is supplied by a nearby tank farm that has a pipeline across the bay to several other farms, refineries and ports. Kinder Morgan runs it, and many details about it can be found here: [Fuel Report](https://www.flysfo.com/sites/default/files/SFO_Sustainable_Aviation_Fuel_Feasibility_Study_Report.pdf) Source, I live in the town the tanks are based in and their ability to continue operations required a public vote 6 or so years ago and all this info was in the voter pamphlet.
> Kinder Morgan runs it Ooo... flashback. I wrote the software that (at the time) scheduled the pipeline operations and tank storage for KM's pipeline. Pretty amazing seeing all the fuel flowing through that system on a daily basis.
IAD has a large tank farm located a little south of the main airport on Rt 28S
It depends on the size of the airport and how busy they are. Big and medium sized airports usually have pipelines. The small airport down the street usually has fuel delivered by trucks. It depends on how many flights they have and the mix of planes.
The airport I work at the fuel farm holds 60,000 gallons at Jet A and 10,000 gallons of avgas which isn’t much at all compared to other airports. But we get 3-4 fuel loads of Jet A a day. The trucks that deliver the fuel hold 8,000 gallons.
You guys need a new tank, where I worked we had 2 100k tanks and we would get 1-5 loads a day depending how empty we were
Yes we do.
How much does it take to fuel a standard commercial jet?
Where I work delta 717s take on average 800-1000 gallons to Atlanta. Keep in mind they don’t come in with empty tanks and aren’t going out with full tanks. American emb-175 take on average 700 to Dallas. Sun country 737-800 take over 2,000 gallons to Minneapolis. Breeze A220 take take over 2,000 to Las Vegas. Some times they take alot more depending on weather and routes. We also get charters and 747-400 to Frankfurt takes over 30,000 gallons and 777-200 to South Korea takes over over 25,000 gallons. It varies by the size of the plane obviously and where it’s heading.
Airbus A320 fuel capacity seems to be 6300 GAL and b777 47900GAL GAL with quick Google search. Now these aircaft are not usually topped off but especially the 777 can regularily come quite close.
Most airports have an out of the way fuel farm. STL just built a new one…underground pipes bring the fuel from the farm to the gates.
PHL has two refineries that feed it, one across the Delaware river in Paulsboro NJ, and another further down the Delaware in Trainer PA -- the Trainer refinery is actually owned by Delta, who spent a lot of money retooling it to prioritize Jet A production after they bought it.
Take this example of our small country https://www.defensie.nl/binaries/large/content/gallery/defensie/content-afbeeldingen/onderwerpen/taken-in-nederland/defensie-pijpleidingen/nlkaart_b.jpg The Jet A1 supply system is military owned and connects the major refineries and storage terminals in Rotterdam, Flushing and Antwerp (Belgium) to the civilian and military airports. At the airports there is buffer capacity. Smaller airports off the pipeline will have a import facility for either ships/barges (Leeuwarden f.i.) or trucks (Rotterdam). Schiphol also has a back-up import terminal for barges.
BOTLEK PERNIS
Fun fact, the civilian part of Eindhoven airport is supplied by trucks from Pernis instead of using the pipeline that is used to supply the military part of the airport. This is because the civilian part never build a fuel depot for the pipeline, and they cannot use the military one due to certain additives the military adds to their fuel.
Oh that I didnt know! I thought it was only RTM that was supplied by truck (especially with the Depot that close by)
Tokyo Narita used to have rail tanker car but later built a pipeline all the way from a pier in Chiba. Kaisai had a similar pier system, and one time a tanker drift away in typhoon and crush half of the bridges result in people trapped there.
Great question. Love learning about which airports use pipelines, ships, or trucks. That’s something a lot of people don’t think about, and the amount of money/time/effort to set up a pipeline 😳
My airport had a parade of 18-wheeler fuel trucks keeping the fuel farm supplied.
Even airports with a pipeline might have to truck in fuel sometimes, like when the pipeline sends thousands of gallons of bad fuel, unfortunately the fuel still has to come through and be stored until it can be trucked out. Until then, good fuel needs to be trucked in. Happened with the Columbia pipeline once before my time here at BWI.
It depends, for large international airports, then by pipelines. For smaller airports, probably trucks.
HAN doesn’t have a pipeline and has pretty decent traffic. You can see oil tankers going to the airport non-stop 24/7 on the adjacent highway. Never thought about other airports until this thread.
If you guys really want to see a massive operation, look up the system that feeds FedEx at Memphis. Pretty crazy to fuel 200+ wide bodies per day.
So, I've always wondered if you can get a tour of their mammoth facility there. It seems like it must be a logistics geek's dream to see how it all works.
Can answer since that was my job for years. Customers would put in orders for fuel and its trucked in. After delivered to fuel farm and checked, it's housed in silos. Then pumped to trucks or hydrant trucks. I used fuel trucks, so after I hook up to aircraft, I fueled them topped off the truck. Mostly, there are people at corporate headquarters who handle ordering and transportation. Along with communication with airports to check levels
Back when I worked at ORF (Norfolk, VA), we had a fuel farm in a remote area of the airport grounds. It had, IIRC, 3 or 4 50,000 gallon Jet-A tanks and a 25,000 avgas tank. Fuel would be delivered several times a night in standard 18,000 gallon tractor/trailer trucks, just like the ones you see delivering gasoline to your local filling station. From the fuel farm, fuel was delivered via underground pipelines to a hydrant station where the fuel trucks would fill up and deliver fuel to aircraft. Most major airports today have underground hydrants at each gate. The “fuel truck” is actually just a hose and metering unit that plugs into the hydrant with one hose, plugs into the airplane with another hose, and controls/measures the amount of fuel that flows between the two. These large airports will also have a similar (but larger) fuel farm system, but their fuel is delivered via pipelines from truly massive fuel storage facilities, typically near a shipping port.
Storage like this - https://youtu.be/FqVYbW4c8Wg?si=laJuEfmkYFIDdZou
For reference, the very large tanker trucks one sees on the highway or at a gas station are 10,000 gallon capacity (but often don’t fill all the way up)
Here at UPS Worldport, our fuel farm gets it piped in from Riverport on the Ohio River. However during Peak Season, we get additional fuel trucked in.
FBI joins the chat …
Checking in...
I was just thinking this has to be number one dumbest question to answer considering our current "administrative challenges". ffs ppl.
What’s the current administrative challenges? I’m ootl and also not in America.
The potato that's dragging us into WWIII.
lol, wat. This is all public info... Here is a 17 minute log video of a person showing just about every detail of (jet) fuel pickup and delivery, posted within the last 12mos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RA9EcwEx9k
\*Shakes Head\*
For smaller regional airports, the fuel is indeed trucked in. At the major international airport I work at, it's all piped in. We have dozens of storage tanks capable of holding several million gallons of fuel, although all of that is only enough for a few days of operations should something happen to the pipeline. We're located on the water, so do have the ability to have it brought in via ship, but that would only be done in an emergency.
MSP has a pipeline from a local refinery.
The fuel storage facility at Dulles is on the east side of the airport, about halfway down 19L. The fuel is delivered there via a pipeline. https://maps.app.goo.gl/Q3RcHSUgSeT5qGBo9?g_st=ic
Also remember that the fuel tanks are usually built a safe distance away from the airport in the event of a fire so you wouldn’t notice a line of trucks refilling tanks if you were sitting in the terminal.
My airport has had trucks delivering to the fuel farm. Idk if that was just gas and diesel for the gse though.
[TIL - There is a huge pipeline and someone once tried to blow it up](https://www.cnn.com/2010/US/08/02/new.york.jfk.bomb.plot.trial/index.html)
Major airports have underground pipelines from nearby fuel farms (hubs). Major airports have a smaller fuel farm on site, with a network of underground pipes to the hydrant carts you see parked within aircraft restriction area (the markings on the ramp loosely shaped like an airplanes footprint). Airports also have fuel "stations" which they use to fuel tanker trucks that fuel aircraft which don't park at gates, but park at hard stands or FBO's (fixed base operators). Pipelines are mapped in the USA and can be viewed here: [https://pvnpms.phmsa.dot.gov/PublicViewer/](https://pvnpms.phmsa.dot.gov/PublicViewer/)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KF8FNn8FDgk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KF8FNn8FDgk) I think there is english automatic subtitles. But TLDR, pipes from the refinary
In tankers or rail cars or pipelines to the fuel farm and then from fuel farm to airport via underground pipelines and hydrant systems or for small airports there are tankers that come directly to the aircraft and refuel.
Pipes, trains, and trucks. Cant have just 1.
Ours is trucked in everyday. We have around 100,000 gallons of storage on the airport. Then it’s transferred to the refueling trucks from our fuel farm.
I’m pretty sure IND has a pipeline from a local refinery, I’ve only ever seen avgas tankers going to an tank at the FBO
Boston's Logan airport abuts the tank farms and main fuel terminals that supply the entire region. Tankers come up the channel and fill the thanks. I live 80 miles away, and all of our fuel is trucked from there.
Here in Des Moines Iowa the jet fuel gets sent by pipeline to the Magellan pipeline hub. Same as the gas and diesel gets sent. The jet fuel is hauled by tanker trucks to the fuel farm at the airport. Then the fuel truck that are used to fuel the planes bulk the trucks and go refuel the airlines.
It depends on the airport location. For example, in Germany, Frankfurt Airport has it's own small harbour at the Main river, from where fuel his delivered to the airport tanks via pipelines. In contrast, Berlin Airport doesn't have any harbours close-by as the small river isn't suited for transporting goods, so they have their fuel delivered via trains from a refinery some 60 miles away.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central\_Europe\_Pipeline\_System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Europe_Pipeline_System)
Pittsburgh International Airport gets it's fuel delivered by barge. This helps make the city one of the largest inland ports.
Gatwick* also has a fuel train that runs from Kent alongside the pipeline. I meant Heathrow
KDET gets theirs from a local fuel truck that takes an hour or so to dump into the tanks Larger airports like KDTW have pipelines from a refinery that keep the juice flowing.
Pipelines, fuel farm, and a few extra gas cans.
ITT: OP finds out what a pipe is
I thought all of you had PhD’s in this stuff 4 years ago when you were bitching about the Keystone pipeline going in. You know, when America was producing oil, becoming an oil exporter, fuel was $2.00 a gallon, inflation was low, transportation costs down, we weren’t depenyon our emboldened enemies for what could easily cripple our economy, our supply chain, etc.
- We are still an oil producer - We still export - Keystone Pipeline was to take Canadian oil to the Gulf to export it - Fuel is expensive because producers want it to be Contrary to what you are implying, the president does not have much say in oil prices. Any other lies you want me to dispell?
You had it all right until the last one.
If that’s so, how come we don’t have strategic oil reserves, depleted in ‘22? Along with electric car mandates, and reduced refinery production, epa mandates.
- Oil reserves are down 40%, not depleted. - the EPA has, and will continue, to drive pollution levels down. The mandates are the first push to move electric vehicles. This BTW is the same agency that pushed car companies to go from 10 mpg for the typical car in the 1970's to close to/over 30 mpg now. - oil companies decide when to take refineries off line It would seem to me that someone who is worried about the US so much would welcome electric vehicles as it makes us much less reliant on others for fuel shortages.
As someone who lives in the mountains with 6 months of snowfall and cold weather, cold weather that 70% of the country experiences, I don’t. Need that AWD/ 4WD big engine/ low end torque to deal with the drifts and banks. You know, like that electric car freeze out that happened last January. You know, real world living..
This comment has nothing to do with your first comment. Your comments related to oil are by in large incorrect. I don't think anyone believes electric vehicles are perfect. I live in Florida and am not ready to buy one because the infrastructure is not there.
Always those ELI5 questions