Construction

Editorial Comment: Adopting digital technologies to enhance operations

What is the future of refining and petrochemical operations? One trend that has been the focus of many articles, whitepapers and conference presentations is the digital transformation of the hydrocarbon processing industry (HPI).

Project Management: How human intelligence and AI are driving project planning in the oil and gas industry

The science of project planning has something of a tenuous reputation. How often do large oil and gas capital expenditure (CAPEX) projects really come in according to plan? Almost never. Indeed, 30% of respondents to a 2018 PWC survey said they had experienced cost overruns of 10%–50% on their Middle East capital projects.

Brazilian developments in the biofuels market

Since the 1970s, Brazil has been a world reference in automotive biofuels, especially bioethanol produced from sugarcane. In 1973, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) forced a sharp rise in oil prices, triggering a massive slowdown in the country’s economic growth, which had been going through what was dubbed the “economic miracle,” with growth at an average of 12% of GDP. This study gives an overview of the biofuel sector in Brazil, along with the main business challenges and opportunities in this area.

Editorial Comment: Processing a sustainable future

An emerging topic along the entire oil and gas value chain is the move toward <i>sustainability.</i> Each company has a somewhat different definition of what sustainability means to its operations.

Onsite

Construction

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.

Global Project Data

<i>Hydrocarbon Processing’s</i> Construction Boxscore Database is tracking more than 1,430 projects around the world, representing nearly $1.9 T in capital expenditures.

Business Trends: EPC 2030: Five vital characteristics that will define the EPC firm of tomorrow

The state of the global engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) industry can accurately be described as “challenging.” Operating in an environment of volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous conditions, EPC firms are facing unsustainable levels of stress.

Industry Perspectives: Petrochemicals surge despite possible future roadblocks

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.

A new liquid-phase isomerization process for xylene loop debottleneck and energy savings

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.