Management
Business Trends: Human reliability—a disruptive innovation
Annual bottom-line losses due to equipment failures total more than $100 MM at major refineries and petrochemical complexes. Corporate executives charge plant personnel with improving the reliability of the facility.
Editorial Comment: Maintenance—a value-added expense
This issue of <i>Hydrocarbon Processing</i> tackles one of the most integral aspects of the downstream industry (or any industry, for that matter): maintenance and reliability. These two terms go hand-in-hand and help to ensure efficient and safe operations.
Prevent human-created hazards with improved job safety analysis
Safety incidents have occurred since the beginning of time. If a “hunter-gatherer” failed to return at the end of a day, the remaining group members took it in stride.
Industry Perspectives: Hydrocarbon Processing’s IRPC returns to Europe in June
Founded in 2009, Gulf Publishing Company and Hydrocarbon Processing’s International Refining and Petrochemical Conference (IRPC) provides a series of events for the international downstream industry covering technical innovations, and exploring both the challenges and opportunities found in today’s market.
Embracing MACs: A better way of executing automation projects
Historically, automation projects have been executed as single-transaction projects. Often, individual projects, along with phases within a given project, are bid with the potential for new vendors and different engineering teams.
People
Udo Bauer has been appointed to the executive board of Hoerbiger Holding AG. Mr. Bauer will represent the compression technology strategic business unit, now comprised of the previous compressor OEM business area and the previous compressor service business area, as the business unit’s CEO.
Business Trends: Standardized modularization—Drivers, challenges and perspectives in the oil and gas industry
Modularization is an alternative way of performing engineering aimed to reduce the number of interfaces, the total installed cost (TIC) and overall schedule length of a project, while optimizing the return on investment (ROI) and allowing standardization for similar future projects.
Viewpoint: Operational excellence—The path to world-class performance
Why is operational excellence (OE) increasingly being recognized as the path to world-class performance?
Process safety incidents, cognitive biases and critical thinking
Process hazard analysis (PHA) is performed to identify possible hazard scenarios that may occur in a process.
People
Linde Engineering North America (LENA) has appointed Jason Cooper as President and CEO.

- LanzaJet expands partnership with Microsoft to strengthen the company’s global growth 6/13
- Phelan Green Group's $2.6-B eMethanol project remains on schedule 6/13
- Algeria launches $7-B investment plan to expand hydrocarbon processing 6/13
- AFPM/API: President Trump officially overturns California (U.S.) gas car ban 6/12
- Decision on oil refiner Italiana Petroli's sale expected around end-June 6/12
- EIA: U.S. crude stocks fall, gasoline and distillate inventories rise as refining activity increases 6/12