Industrial Pumps Blog

Globally, oil production trends have mitigated towards increasing pipeline diameters and greater oil volume throughput from both onshore and offshore oil fields to downstream production facilities.  In part this trend is fuelled by a need to reduce the carbon footprint of the producer but also to reduce the cost of production using economies of scale, reduced maintenance and replacement cycles and increasing efficiency and reliability.

In addition, much of the global transportation infrastructure is in the middle of a huge reorganization and refit, so many of the previously accepted standards are being revised in the light of modern and forecasted developments.

The largest three-screw crude oil pipeline pump is capable of being fitted into 24 inch diameter pipes and can pump 85,000 barrels of oil per day under 2,000 pounds per square inch.  The oil industry needs the capacity of these new generation pumps to meet the stringent constraints being imposed upon them by the environmental lobbyists and government agencies involved, but at the same time by shareholders who have experienced a severe battering in the economic situation prevailing at present.

Centrifugal pumps no longer can be relied upon to deliver the reduced carbon footprint or the financial benefits.  It is not simply these two key factors which have stimulated the development of positive displacement pump technology; new generation pumps are capable of being retrofitted to old-style infrastructure which provides even greater scope for cost savings and carbon reduction.

Crude oil pipeline designs are increasingly calling for positive vane displacement pumps because of the cost savings and the 30 year track record of this pump type in some of the most extreme and harshest environments encountered in the world.  Screw pump operation also delivers high volume/high operating efficiency with increased maintenance and replacement cycles such that where fitted, the operator can experience up to 30% reduction in overall costs associated with the installation.

With dwindling oil reserves it has become economically feasible to tap oil fields which less than ten years ago would not have been commercially viable.  Crude oil production is now taking place in some of the most remote locations on the globe and under the harshest of conditions both on land and at sea.  Getting the crude out of the ground is a major challenge but the work is only beginning once it is brought to the surface – the raw product must then be transported over great distances via a complex network of pipeline, intermediate pumping stations, treated and refined into the various petroleum products our modern life depends upon.

This is a high energy process and energy is not cheap, especially in remote oil producing locations which are more the norm today.

Modern oil production must take account of cost with far tighter margins than the 1970’s when only reliability and high availability of the production operation were required.  Today, modern oil producers must ensure they are using energy efficient extraction and processing methods and are subject to the most stringent emissions and environmental controls that the industry has ever encountered in its history.  This economic and regulatory environment is only going to become harder for production companies with the imminent introduction of carbon control regimes on a global basis as well as targeting specific industries, the oil industry is at the top of that list!

Oil producers are relying more than ever on established and trusted partners to provide fluid handling systems that deliver real Total Savings of Ownership (TSO) and provide reliable solutions which increase production and investment returns while operating in the hardest environments, both physical and economic.  This demands a solution provider which is capable of delivering multiple fluid handling systems and ancillary support during installation and operation wherever the equipment is being used today.