The skills gap is not a new phenomenon for the oil and gas sector. An aging workforce and increased competition for tomorrow’s technical talent have left the industry nervous about its future. On the heels of the 2019 Global Energy Talent Index (GETI), a panel of experts came together to discuss the sector’s ongoing struggle with the skills gap and what oil and gas/energy companies can do about it.
Equatorial Guinea plans to invest $1 B to build several energy projects, including the construction of two new refineries, each with a capacity of 30,000 bpd–40,000 bpd, as well as oil storage facilities, a methanol-to-gasoline plant and an LNG expansion project.
Hydrocarbon Processing’s Construction Boxscore Database is tracking more than 1,430 projects around the world, representing nearly $1.9 T in capital expenditures.
Over the past several years, investments in petrochemicals capacity additions have skyrocketed. Hundreds of billions of dollars have and will be invested in additional petrochemicals units and complexes.
Kyriakou, S.,
Plellis, C.,
Tatsis, V.,
Damianou, C.,
Gkanis, D., Hellenic Petroleum;
Burgess, T.,
González, R., W. R. Grace
Hellenic Petroleum S.A.’s Aspropyrgos refinery is located near Athens, Greece. It has a total refining capacity of approximately 7.5 MMtpy and a Nelson complexity index of 9.7. The refinery was built in 1958 and has undergone several upgrades, including the installation of a fluid catalytic cracking unit (FCCU).
Kılıç, D.,
Bahadır Kara, İ.,
Rakıcı Önder, E.,
Reyhan Dinçer, A.,
Dönmez Yavuz, G.,
ÖzsaĞıroĞlu, E., Tüpraş
Hydrocrackers are key refinery units that convert heavy feed components into valuable lighter products. The profitability of these units is directly related to this conversion level. Conversion reactions take place in a nearly pure hydrogen environment, with the help of selective catalysts, under high pressure and high temperature. The products of the unit are separated in the fractionator section. Unconverted oil taken from the fractionator bottoms reveals the conversion performance of the unit.
Mhatre, S.,
Warke, V., Reliance Industries Ltd.;
Choi, A.,
Molinier, M.,
Saple, A., ExxonMobil Chemical Co.
In a typical xylene loop, C8 aromatics are fractionated out of a heavy reformate C8+ aromatics stream and collected in the xylene column overhead. Then, paraxylene (PX) from the C8 aromatics stream is recovered as product—usually by an adsorption or crystallization process—in the PX recovery section.
Ammonia is well known as a fertilizer. However, it is also a potential carbon-free fuel and an excellent solution for storage of renewable electricity, especially if the syngas needed for producing the ammonia is made by electrolysis.
The year 2020 will be a mess from the fuel oil stability and compatibility points of view. The year will be price-driven, so the temptation to “cut corners” is great—meaning that a highly variable number of blend components to manufacture the fuel oil will open a “Pandora’s box” of complex and questionable fuel formulations.
The nominees for the 2019 Top Project awards are out. Using Hydrocarbon Processing’s Construction Boxscore Database, the editors have identified nine projects that are anticipated to significantly impact the global or regional downstream industries.