Originally Posted By: Wolf359
Pretty much all gas in the region comes from the same place. The only difference is the additive package...
I dug into this a little bit, and found an informative 2015 article from the Idaho Statesman newspaper:
http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/business/article40864992.html
Quote:
...North Idaho mostly gets its gas from refineries in Billings, Mont. That fuel is shipped through the Yellowstone Pipeline to terminals in Spokane. Other gasoline from the Puget Sound near Seattle is sent to Portland through a pipeline and then barged up the Columbia River to Pasco and a terminal near Lewiston at Wilma, Wash.
Gasoline comes to Southern Idaho, including the Treasure Valley, through one of two 65-year-old, 8-inch-wide underground pipelines running in parallel from Salt Lake City. The second pipeline carries other fuels, including diesel, jet fuel and heating oil. The pipelines are now owned by the Tesoro Corp.
Utah and Wyoming have five oil refineries each, Montana has four and Colorado two. The Utah refineries, which obtain crude oil from Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and Canada, supply about 70 percent of the gasoline and diesel consumed in Utah and Idaho.
It takes 66 hours for gasoline and 90 hours for other products to reach Boise on the 706-mile journey from Salt Lake City. A water plug separates the different fuels in the second pipeline and different-octane fuels in the gas pipeline.
The Tesoro Pipeline supplies 2.8 million to 3.1 million gallons of motor fuel per day, and it runs near capacity, according to the Attorney General’s Office.
Ethanol, detergents and other additives determined by branded-gasoline suppliers such as Chevron, Shell and Sinclair are added at the local terminals. Jones’ stations [Stinker Stores, a Boise company with 65 stores in Idaho] sell Sinclair gas.
“Each of the terminals has dedicated ethanol storage, and when one of my tankers shows up to pull a load of fuel, we specify the octane level and our producer, Sinclair, has their additive package that they blend in,” Jones said. “Computers take care of the mix of that cocktail of products, and that’s what becomes Sinclair-branded gasoline. The same goes for Chevron, Shell, Texaco, those guys.”