In response to Russo's question about the refineries etc. I cannot answer the questions directly but some indirect answers may shed some light on this.
Oil was discovered in the San Juan Basin in 1922. In the beginning this production was one of the reasons that the Farmington branch was converted to NG in 1923, so that the crude could be shipped on the RGS and RG to Montrose, transloaded, and shipped on, probably to Denver.
The Alamosa refinery almost certainly was part and parcel of a total project involving the pipeline, the loading facilities and the tank cars as well. In the oilfield world, custody transfer of oil takes place at the lease tank battery. When the oil leaves that tank battery it no longer belongs to the producer, but to either the transporter or the refiner. If you have pipeline access at the tank battery, it belongs directly to the refiner, and I think that this probably was the case here, even though the pipeline involved a transfer at Chama. Once a stable producing rate could be either established or forecast, the whole project, pipeline, storage, tank cars and refinery appears to be geared to the 1000 BOPD producing rate at Gramps, and was all financed and probably owned by the refining company. Prior to 1937, as the field was being developed, it is possible that the oil would have been trucked to Chama and loaded there for transport WEST to follow the previous routing for San Juan Basin oil. After 1964, the production was probably trucked directly to Albuquerque to the refinery there as it was probably cheaper to do so as the price paid to the producer is a net price with transportation costs deducted.
All speculation on my part, but that is pretty much the way that the system works.
Edit. In the post on the first oil trains in 1937, the oil was billed to Denver, which answers part of Russ's question about the Alamosa refinery. Apparently when the oil shipments started the Alamosa refinery was not yet complete (or perhaps even started). Everything still does appear to be sized however, for that 1000 BOPD rate, as running 9, 11 car trains in two weeks gets you right at the capacity of the refinery for the same period.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/01/2023 02:58PM by Everett Lueck.
