Economics
An operations reference model for common refinery operations
Refineries are large, highly automated, complex systems involving hundreds of people, thousands of work processes, thousands of control loops and tens of thousands of input/output points.
Industry Metrics
The impact of Canadian and French refinery outages caused margins to fall slightly in the Atlantic Basin and Europe, despite stronger gasoline demand and higher inventories.
Business Trends: Asia’s smaller downstream players have big plans
Most of the focus on Asian downstream capacity construction revolves around large consuming nations, such as China and India.
Viewpoint: Envisioning a “future-proof” refinery of the future
Trying to predict how global refining markets will look in 2026 is a losing proposition. The only thing we can count on with any real certainty is uncertainty.
Reliability: Machinery quality assessment on twin-screw compressors
Machinery quality assessment (MQA) is similar to bid conditioning, and both relate to structured efforts.
Global: Meeting Africa’s demand for oil products
Demand for refined oil products is expected to continue growing in Africa, both in the short and medium terms. However, the continent’s refining capacity is unlikely to keep pace as commercial risks threaten to hold back planned new refineries and the expansion of existing facilities.
Industry Metrics
US refinery utilization rates have increased in some areas following the peak of maintenance season.
Business Trends: Will India be Asia’s next downstream powerhouse?
The Asia-Pacific region dominates in the total number of active projects in all sectors of the downstream hydrocarbon processing industry. Just as China has seen unprecedented growth over the past decade, India is emerging as the globe’s new oil demand center.
Innovations
Unintended fugitive emissions from pressurized plant components have long been a key concern for operators as well as regulators.
Global Project Data
According to <i>Hydrocarbon Processing’s </i> Construction Boxscore Database, there were nearly 90 new project announcements from January 2015 to June 2015.
- Aramco signs MoU with Microsoft to help advance industrial AI and digital talent transformation 2/23
- Chandra Asri's chlor alkali-ethylene dichloride project reaches 50% completion 2/23
- Solvay to reduce production at Torrelavega soda ash plant due to market conditions 2/23
- Zeon Corp. holds groundbreaking for new cyclo-olefin polymers plant 2/23
- Honeywell adjusts acquisition agreement for Johnson Matthey's Catalyst Technologies business down to £1.325 billion 2/23
- Indorama Ventures and AMB Spa introduce industrial-scale breakthrough for recyclable multilayer trays 2/23
