What is the difference between crude oil and condensate?
Then, is condensate and NGL the same?
In U.S. usage, a “plant condensate” is the equivalent of products classified as “pentanes+” and natural gasoline, and these are considered NGLs. On the other hand, U.S. usage typically does not consider “field or lease condensate” as an NGL, instead classifying these commodities as crude oil.
Simply so, how is fuel different from crude oil?
Crude oil is a finite resource. Petrol and other fuels are produced from it using fractional distillation. Cracking is used to convert long alkanes into shorter, more useful hydrocarbons.
Like all fossil fuels, condensate contains toxicants which are harmful to the environment, animals and humans. It is generally more flammable and explosive than normal crude oil. Whether escaped condensate causes an oil spill or not depends on whether it has vaporized, burnt off, or escaped in liquid form.