MMEX’s rudimentary Phase I topping plant could never operate at a profit, even if it were properly designed.
It is well understood in the industry that a stand-alone crude distillation unit cannot operate at a profit - a CDU is one part of a complete refinery.
As proposed, MMEX’s Phase I system could not produce any directly marketable product - the three intermediate streams it would be capable of producing, ATB, AGO, and LGO require further refining in order to be useful.
A combination of fatal problems exist with MMEX’s Phase I proposal - ranging from the lack of stream parallelism in critical parts of the system, missing critical processing components for dealing with real-world Permian Basin feedstocks, to its isolated location.
Any qualified engineer, marketing or technical analyst who looks at what MMEX has proposed understands it is failed before it ever gets out the gate.
Mad J. is significantly dumber than even the most average "refinery builder."