PETROLEUM PRODUCTION & REFINING OPERATIONS

While Petroleum Production is concerned with the recovery of reservoir fluids to surface and their processing in accordance with technical, safety and economic criteria, processing plants are designed to treat specific types of hydrocarbon according to their characteristics, removing non-hydrocarbon components such as water, carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulphide, nitrogen, solids etc., and ‘upgrade’ the hydrocarbons quality to the required international specifications. Crude oil processing may involve gas-oil separation, water-oil separation, electrostatic desalting to eliminate salts, desulphurization to remove the hydrogen sulphide, (for sour crudes) and stabilization to meet required international standards. For Gas processing, separation, dehydration, adsorption, absorption, condensation by means of refrigeration and adsorption, and desulphurisation-decarbonation in order to eliminate hydrogen sulphide and carbon dioxide (if necessary), are carried out. Crude oil/raw gas separation takes advantage of the difference in weight or gravity of each fluid, employing the aid of Separators, such as scrubbers, knockout vessels, flash vessels, traps, expansion vessels, cyclone separators, spherical separators, Schoepentoeter, vertical and horizontal se[parators, inclined plates and vertical baffles, straightening vanes, swirl tube, mist mat and vane packs, vortex breakers, production/bulk separators and test separators. The end product is a market/refinery ready crude oil, while the gas output might be sent for further processing. The operations of producing and declining fields are also given adequate attention. At the refinery, the ‘breakdown’ or transformation of the crude oil into utilizable hydrocarbon products, through the process of distillation, is carried out. Refineries distill crude oil by employing a number of crude oil processing systems. Refinery units such as the Atmospheric Crude Oil Distillation Unit, Naphtha Hydro Desulphuriser Unit, Catalytic Reforming Unit, Kerosene Hydro Treater Unit, Heavy Gas Oil Hydro Desulphuriser Unit, Vacuum Distillation Unit, Hydro Cracker Unit, Hydrogen Unit, Sour Water Stripping Unit, Fractionation and Distillation Equipment Unit work in consortia to yield products like Kerosene for aviation and domestic use (which boils out at 180 º C), Gasoline for road transportation (boils out at 30 º C), Naphta for making chemicals (boils out at 110 º C), Diesel (boils out at 260 º C), marine transportation and heating fuel...