Re: OXI! Ugo Bardi, Gail Tverberg, Steve Ludlum discussion
Posted: Fri 10 Jul 2015, 18:30:23
2010 is pretty old so you use 2009 data instead? Anyway, this report is from 2014. Hopefully it's more to your liking. It examines changing crude blends from a mostly arab blend with an API of 31 to a mostly LTO blend with an API of 46. As expected, the diesel cut was reduced. But the difference was small. The gasoline:diesel ratio changed from 1.5:1 API 31 to 1.6:1 API 46. This is still much better than the old ratio of 2:1 when refiners were trying to optimize gasoline production. Note that this paper is based on utilizing current assets. IE, not making the large capital investments needed for higher diesel cuts. You might want to skip to page 15:
OPTIMIZING NAPHTHA COMPLEXES IN THE TIGHT OIL BOOMRefiners today face ever increasing demands to optimize current assets and operating expenses in order to maximize profitability. This paper attempts to explore some of the opportunities and challenges associated with shale crudes, aka tight shale oil.
Several case studies were run to show the impact of changing crudes. The total crude rate was kept constant at 150 MBPD. The base case crude consisted of 75 MBPD of Arab Medium, 39 MBPD of West Texas Intermediate and 36 MBPD of Maya. In case 1, the crude was changed to 113 MBPD of Bakken and 37 MBPD of Western Canadian Select. In case 2, the crude was 113 MBPD of Eagle Ford and 37 MBPD of WCS. The lighter Eagle Ford crude resulted in a higher crude blend API of
46.2°.
Case 1: Replacing crudes with Bakken/WCS
The first case evaluated the impact of changing to a lighter, less expensive crude blend of 75% Bakken and 25% WCS. The cost of the crude blend was reduced by $5.36/bbl, and the API increased from 31.3°API to 37.3°API. The lighter crude resulted in a higher percentage of LPG, LSR, with similar kerosene, diesel, but lower atmospheric residue cuts.
Case 2: Replacing base crude with EagleFord/WCS
In case 2, Bakken was replaced with the lighter Eagle Ford crude, increasing the blend API from 37.1° to 46.2°.
Product_ Unit Base Case1 Case2
Gasoline MBPD 84.6 86.4 83.2
Diesel__ MBPD 55.3 52.7 51.1
G/D___________ 1.5 1.6 1.6
Products $/BBL Base +$5.8 $2.76
UOP’s key LP findings when processing tight oils (Higher API’s):
Lower crude price is the key economic driver
Increasing API, increasing light Naphtha (C5/C6)
Diesel Production decreases
Isomerate and Reformate octane-bbls increase in gasoline pool.
SUMMARY
This case study demonstrated that existing refinery configurations can be optimized to process a new crude diet consisting of tight oils and increase profitability. Profitability can be increased further when employing the latest high yield catalysts.