The main objective of any industry is to operate as close as possible to the point where profits are maximized.
Maintaining the structural integrity of a pipeline is a significant investment of time and resources for organizations in the oil and gas industry.
The purpose of this article is to demonstrate an autonomous operations (AO) vision, along with its feasibility, by conceptualizing a roadmap where meaningful progress can be achieved in a horizon of 3 yr–20 yr.
Hydrocarbon Processing, the downstream processing sector’s leading technical publication, has announced the winners for its third annual awards.
This special section details all finalists within each category for the fourth annual HP Awards. The winners will be announced on Oct. 1.
Paraxylene production is a highly cyclical business that is subject to changes in the global economy and dependent on feedstock costs, alternative dispositions for aromatics, utilities costs and plant locations, among other factors. With the large PX capacity added by recently started crude-to-chemicals complexes and the expected impact of the economic recession on commodities demand, many aromatics complexes face a significant slowdown in the coming months or, possibly, years.
Progress in the driverless car segment has served to illuminate one of the major future goals in industrial and process manufacturing: autonomous operations in process plants—in other words, the autonomous plant. While AO for process plants has received interest from the process automation and control industry, limited serious discussion has taken place in the process operations and IT domains.
Refineries and petrochemical plants face similar challenges in daily operations. Each must mitigate risk, anticipate maintenance, optimize operations and minimize expenses. To achieve these goals, plant personnel rely heavily on data to drive decisions.
Sphera has released a new Interactive piping and instrumentation diagram (P&ID) solution that helps organizations break down silos between their operations, maintenance and engineering departments while simplifying isolation planning.
No doubt exists that COVID-19 is disrupting the oil and gas industry. Oil prices are falling, demand is down, supply is up, and storage capacity is limited. In these difficult times, the industry must swiftly act to keep business viable to come back strong when conditions improve.