eric_b wrote:I liked the analogy of the stoner running out of bud and being forced to scrape the
black, sticky, sinky, gooey resin from his smoking paraphernalia to get high.
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aflatoxin wrote:As an aside, most of these plants are really old. They are showing the strain of the years
Fire Protection and Prevention.
Because thermal cracking is a closed process, the primary potential for fire is from leaks or releases of liquids, gases, or vapors reaching an ignition source such as a heater. The potential for fire is present in coking operations due to vapor or product leaks. Should coking temperatures get out of control, an exothermic reaction could occur within the coker.
The furnace, soaking drums, lower part of the tower, and high-temperature exchangers are usually subject to corrosion. Hydrogen sulfide corrosion in coking can also occur when temperatures are not properly controlled above 900° F.
JoeW wrote:It all makes you wonder if this is the plan.
You turn the oil peak into a plateau by restricting refinery capacity. It buys more time until crude production declines.
The question is, how much more time?
If you believed peak would have been 94mbpd in 2015, for example, but refining capacity remains capped at 84mbpd, here's what would happen:
you would cut the portion of your crude oil production graph above the 84mbpd line. the area above that line will get placed on the decline side somehow, pushing the decline further out. in this example, that area is roughly 10mbpd * 3650 days, or 36500 mb (36.5gb) [model production peak like intersection of two lines with slope 2mbpd/yr and -2mbpd/yr. Assuming production remains flat at 84mbpd due to refinery capacity bottleneck, the decline is pushed back by more than 11 years.
Actually there are a few refineries being built/planned in other areas of the world.
http://www.resourceinvestor.com/pebble.asp?relid=12906
Quote:
Right across the Middle East, Indonesia, India and China, new refinery projects are ready to exploit the gaps in the market left by the OECD nations, especially the U.S.
Saudi Arabia's Yanbu refinery on the Red Sea is going to be financed to the tune of around $8 billion. The existing refinery at Rabigh is to receive somewhere in the region of a $2 billion upgrade in conjunction with the Japanese company Sumitomo. Then the refinery at Ras Tanura is also to be upgraded, at a cost of $1.3 billion.
Saudi Aramco has also been aggressively persuing refining operations overseas, notably in China. Here Aramco will work on joint ventures with the Chinese state oil company SINOPEC to create a $1.2 billion operation in Qingdao province. Then perhaps most interestingly is the three-way venture between the Chinese state, Aramco and American company Exxon Mobil [NYSE:XOM] to build a $3.5 billion refinery in Fujian province. This refinery is especially important as it will be built specifically to handle brands of heavy Saudi crude.
So other opportunities are now presenting themselves to Middle Eastern and also Asian countries. Indonesia is building a new refinery in Tuban, Eastern Java. China of course is undertaking a huge expansion programme including a $3.3 billion build in Dushanzi to process oil from Khazakstan. Also India is perhaps the most aggressive nation with $8 billion worth of new refining operations, upgrades and joint ventures.
Kuwait too has multi-billion dollar plans. A new $6.5 billion plant near Kuwait city to come online by 2010 will produce a whopping 600,000bpd. Plus $3.3 billion in upgrades for the Al Ahmadi and Mina Abdullah refineries will mean Kuwait could be producing as much as 1.3 million barrels of refined product every day, within five years.
Qatar have undertaken the multi-billion dollar Dolphin Project to work on new fuels, especially Gas-To-Liquids (GTL) refining. This will enable Qatar to supplement its existing petro-industry to produce new liquid fuels - ones that could be vital in powering road transport, airlines and others in an increasingly fuel-competitive world.
There is the $1 billion Oryx refinery in conjunction with Sasol of South Africa [NYSE:SSL] and also the Pearl joint venture with Royal Dutch Shell [NYSE:RDS.A; RDS.B]. The latter is expected to produce 70,000bpd as early as 2009. Exxon Mobil has also penned a deal to undertake GTL in Qatar. Throw in the Ras Saffan operation co-financed with Korean company Daewoo which will produce LPG, kerosene and naphtha, and you can see a strong pattern evolving.
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