Transportation and Refining

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Transportation and Refining
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Transportation

• The issue
• How to transport oil and natural gas from the oil
  fields to the processing facilities?
• Takes a complex network system
• 4 main methods of Transportation
• Tank trucks
• Rail cars
• Marine Transportation
• Pipelines

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Transportation

• Tank Trucks
• Haul crude from the well to the receiving point
  (refinery, pipeline tank)
• Early 1900s with horse drawn tank trucks
• Used less frequent in large oil fields as
  pipelines grew

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Transportation

• Continues today where small volumes of oil
  gathered from scattered wells.
• Move only 3 of total crude volume
• High cost per barrel
• Nuisance of truck traffic
• Noise
• Road Maintenance
• Emissions
• Useful in new discovery areas without
  infrastructure or long term uncertainty
• South Texas, North Dakota
• Mostly used in distributing refined product from
  refineries to distribution outlets.

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Transportation

• Rail Cars
• Initially stared in mid-1880s
• Safer than moving oil via water
• Originally in wooden barrels
• Wooden barrels were expensive, lots of handling ,
  leaked, stolen
• First Tank car - Densmore Brothers
• Two wooden tubs (1700 gallon) on a flatcar
• Phased out in early 1900s by pipelines

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Transportation

• Rail Cars Today
• Choice when supply and demand exceeds tank truck
  capabilities, but pipeline not feasible
• Sometimes quicker to initiate service than new
  pipelines.
• Rail system where pipelines do not exist.
• Complete rail coverage in the United States
• Less environmental concerns than pipelines
  trucks

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Transporation

• Tank Train
• Developed by Genral American Transportation
  Company (GATX) in 1970s
• Interconnected cars that can be (un)/loaded by a
  single connection.
• Much more efficient/quicker than individual car
  loading
• Load at 3000 gals/min
• Large flexible hose connects each
• car.
• Petroleum loaded in all cars through
• single connection in the first car

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Transportation

• Marine Transportation
• First ocean going tanker
• 1886 Ship named Gluckauf
• Used Ships hull as storage compartment
• Sailed from NYC to Germany hauling refined oil
• By 1900 (Spindletop) significant shipping began
  to East Coast and abroad

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Transportation

• Marine Transportation Today
• Types of Marine Transportation
• Barges
• Tankers
• Supertankers
• Average-Sized Tankers
• Icebreaking Tankers
• Natural Gas Tankers
• Tankers haul 2/3 of
• petroleum produced
• in the world

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Transportation

• Barges
• Flat deck and flat bottom
• Series of floating tanks with hatches and piping
  for loading/unloading.
• Today doubled hulled for safety
• Depend on tugboats, towboats, water currents to
  move
• Main use on inland waterways

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Transportation

• Supertankers
• 2 million barrel oil capacity
• Heat and supply gas for 85,000 people for 1 year
• Economically move oil to larger refineries
• Second most efficient next to pipelines
• Not capable of passing through all waterways
• 1,500 long, move at 18 mph
• Less in use today
• Less demand for imported oil

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Transportation

• Average-Size Tankers
• About ¼ the capacity and size of Supertanker
• 500,000 barrel capacity
• Very safe and reliable
• Most double hulled. All by 2015
• Automatic collision avoidance system
• 30 year life
• More flexible and lower
• investment cost.

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Transportation

• Ice Breaking Tankers
• Specialized double hulled tankers
• Reaches edge of ice cover
• Turns around
• Reverses rotation of propellers
• Breaks ice using the stern
• Cut through ice 27 inch thick

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Transportation

• Natural Gas Tankers
• Natural gas is liquefied before being transported
• High pressure and very low temperatures (-259 F)
• Gas shrinks to 1/600 of original volume
• The LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) regasified when
  reaches destination.
• LNG Tankers have pressurized, refrigerated and
  insulated tanks.
• Keeps gas in liquid state

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Transportation

• Pipelines
• History
• First pipelines in PA in 1865
• Oil moved at 1/3 cost versus trucking
• Oil boom in early 1900s in Mid-Continent
  required oil to be moved to population centers in
  the east.
• Mid 1940s first large diameter cross country
  lines
• During WWII Safer that hauling oil on boats
• Population shift to West required more lines

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Transportation

• Pipelines Today
• More than 200,000 miles of petroleum pipeline
• Generally 4 to 48 diameter
• Gas up to 60
• Buried 3 to 6
• Operated remotely at a Main
• Control Room.
• RTUs (Remote Terminal Units)
• along the pipeline relay
• Flow
• Pressure
• Temperature
• Open and close valves
• Most cost effective method of Transporting
  petroleum!

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Transportation

• Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS)
• Oil from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez
• 800 miles, 48 2.1million barrel/day capacity
• Construction 1974-1977
• Permitting started in 1969
• Numerous challenges including
• Terrain
• Temperature
• Wildlife
• Environment
• Engineering landmark
• 1988Deliver 25 of US production
• TAPS Video

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Transportation

• Keystone Pipeline System
• Move Petroleum from Canada and Northern US to
  Gulf Coast.
• 2,150 miles, 590,000 barrel/day capacity
• Route 4 not approved
• Protests about the pipeline's impact on
• Nebraska's environmentally sensitive
• region.
• TransCanada submitted new route.
• Waiting on Federal approval.
• Remaining issues/concerns
• Spill
• Carbon emissions
• Potential water pollution
• Keystone Video

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Refining

• Oil and gas little value in raw state.
• Value is what is in what is created
• Fuels
• Lubricating oil
• Waxes
• Asphalt
• Petrochemicals
• Many impurities in crude oil
• Oxygen
• Nitrogen
• Sulfur
• Salt
• Water
• Trace Metals (i.e. nickel)
• Make up of oil

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Refining

• A refinery removes any substance from the crude
  oil and breaks the oil down into various
  hydrocarbon components
• Some components treated even further to give even
  more desirable components
• What products come from a Barrel of Oil?
• Refining Video

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Refining

• Fractional Distillation
• Initial step in processing crude
• Heat crude to high temperatures in a Fractional
  Tower
• Hydrocarbons in crude boil (vaporize) at
  different temperatures.
• One fraction boils off while others remain a
  liquid.
• Resulting products
• called distillates
• Further refinement and
• processing of the distillates
• required.

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Refining

• Cracking
• Breaks down the heavy residues into lighter
  products (gasoline).
• Chemical process that breaks long heavy molecules
  into lighter shorter ones.
• 3 Types of Cracking
• Thermal Cracking
• Catalytic Cracking
• Hydrocracking

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Refining

• Thermal Cracking
• Oldest and simplest process
• High heat used to break down heavy oils cracking
• Leaves a heavy residue that is recycled back for
  further breakdown.
• Catalytic Cracking
• Uses a catalyst in a chemical reaction to make
  the conversion. Most effective cracking process
• Catalyst a substance that effects the speed of
  the reaction without changing itself.
• Typically a powder
• Residue (coke) is burned off the catalyst for
  resuse of the catalyst.

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Refining

• Hydrocracking
• Hydrocracking performed by heating at very high
  pressure in the presence of hydrogen
• Extra hydrogen molecules are added to the
  catalytic cracked hydrocarbons.
• Major source of jet fuel and gasoline

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Homework

1. Name the 4 ways crude oil can be transported to
   processing facilities.
2. What are the 4 disadvantages of hauling crude oil
   via truck transport?
3. Explain why initiating crude oil service via rail
   is sometimes quicker than via pipelines.
4. What is a Tank Train ?
5. Name the 5 type of Marine Transportation vessels.
6. What is the main disadvantage of using
   Supertankers?
7. What is the most cost effective method of
   transporting crude oil?
8. What is causing the delay in the approval of the
   Keystone Pipeline?
9. What does a Refinery do?
10. Explain Fractional Distillation.
11. What are the 3 types of Cracking