The Challenges Involved in Crude Oil Transportation
Crude oil transportation is a serious issue with oil fields located in remote locations, and as resources become harder to find, this will be an increasingly challenging factor in effective upstream operations. The distance and widely varied environments which require extensive design work for increasingly complex pipe networks. Monitoring and managing oil and gas pipeline networks requires sophisticated techniques and highly specialized expertise to ensure uptime and performance meet operational requirements and maintain company performance.
The single most important factor which has pushed to the fore of upstream operations and crude oil transportation issues is the consumption of energy.
Energy used to be fairly irrelevant because it was so cheap, however the days of cheap energy are now long behind us. Energy consumption is a major factor in either destroying ROI or creating it. In addition, energy consumption is affected by other things aside from price – environmental impact of energy production and consumption are also posing design and operational issues like never before. The impact of high energy prices is here to stay; the likelihood of companies being able to go back in time or see a return of energy supply considerations of even 10 years ago is highly unlikely.
The increase in energy costs has moved the focus of management decision making to consider the Total Cost of Operations (TCO), in order to establish more effective ways of managing the available resources to enhance performance and drive costs down.
A TCO approach forces consideration of all three of the major streams involved in crude oil transportation, from upstream production operations, through to midstream (field processing, field pipeline processing, long distance oil transportation and storage) through to downstream (petrochemical manufacturing and refining). All streams must utilize the most effective methods for crude oil transportation, processing and storage and operate within global parameters in order to meet commercial requirements and operational cost restrictions to meet environmental restrictions and company profitability.
Tags: crude oil, Crude Oil Transfer Pumps, crude oil transport, Energy, fluid handling equipment, Industrial Pumps, oil and gas