Economics
HP Industry Metrics
Mid-January saw the continued decline of monthly average Brent crude oil prices, which fell $17/bbl from November to a monthly average of $62/bbl. The continual price decrease reflects US tight oil pr..
HP People
ABB’s board of directors unanimously nominated Peter Voser to succeed Hubertus von Grünberg as chairman.
Multi-faceted approach on energy efficiency methods
The hydrocarbon processing industry (HPI) is a high-energy-consuming business. After cost for feedstocks, energy is the next largest operating expense for an HPI facility. Since the first oil embargo ..
Shale gas drives new opportunities for US downstream
This shift to lighter feeds for the SC will reduce the future availability of other petrochemical feedstocks—in particular, propylene.
DCS migration: Lessons learned
In 2005, TOTAL’s Port Arthur refinery (PAR), like many present-day refining and petrochemical facilities, found itself with an obsolete, at-capacity distributed control system (DCS). As shown in ..
Avoid counterproductive project management practices
For many years, reliability-focused engineers have observed flawed procurement processes for mechanical equipment. Many requirements are supposedly aimed at the lowest possible lifecycle cost; however..
Consider technology to reduce compressor vibration and noise problems
Industrial centrifugal compressors installed in hydrocarbon processing industry (HPI) complexes absorb significant amounts of mechanical power when compressing gases. A small part of the mechanical en..
HP Editorial Comment: Alternative energy?
Alternative energy is a point-of-reference term. Natural gas is an alternative energy resource for transportation fuels. As more natural gas resources are developed, natural gas is displacing coal as ..
HP Reliability: Plan now to deal with stressed equipment later
The US Energy Information Administration’s (EIA’s) “Today in Energy” brief evaluated how US refineries are processing record amounts of crude oil (Fig. 1), with Midwest and Gulf Co..
HP Automation Strategies: Control on the wire(less)
Since the industrial revolution, process/industrial control had relied on tightly coupled systems to transmit control signals. Industrial plants have used “modern” control via wired electron..
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