Friday, December 18, 2009

What happens if an oil refinery shuts down?

No gas, no oil, no plastics.





Natural oil is a tarry substance that is useless unless it is refined. An oil refinery uses various catalysts and cooks the raw oil at various temperatures to separate the various products from it. The oil you pour into your car is not the oil that comes out of the ground. Gasoline, diesel and other chemicals made from oil are brought out in different ways by the refinery process.





If you have a million barrels of oil flowing into the US, but only the refining capacity to process hundreds of barrels then you will only get a few hundred gallons of gasoline out of it. The oil companies have been complaining about the damage from Hurricane Katrina that reduced the US oil refinery capacity. However, despite their record profits they haven't tried to increase that capacity. This way there is more demand and so they make more profit.





So if the oil refinery shuts down the raw oil sits in tanks unused and unuseable.





According to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_refiner鈥?/a>


';Raw or unprocessed (';crude';) oil is not useful in the form it comes in out of the ground. Although ';light, sweet'; (low viscosity, low sulfur) oil has been used directly as a burner fuel for steam vessel propulsion, the lighter elements form explosive vapors in the fuel tanks and so it is quite dangerous, especially so in warships. For this and many other uses, the oil needs to be separated into parts and refined before use in fuels and lubricants, and before some of the byproducts could be used in petrochemical processes to form materials such as plastics, detergents, solvents, elastomers, and fibers such as nylon and polyesters. Petroleum fossil fuels are used in ship, automobile and aircraft engines. These different hydrocarbons have different boiling points, which means they can be separated by distillation. Since the lighter liquid elements are in great demand for use in internal combustion engines, a modern refinery will convert heavy hydrocarbons and lighter gaseous elements into these higher value products using complex and energy intensive processes....





Once separated and purified of any contaminants and impurities, the fuel or lubricant can be sold without any further processing. Smaller molecules such as isobutane and propylene or butylenes can be recombined to meet specific octane requirements of fuels by processes such as alkylation or less commonly, dimerization. Octane grade of gasoline can also be improved by catalytic reforming, which strips hydrogen out of hydrocarbons to produce aromatics, which have much higher octane ratings. Intermediate products such as gasoils can even be reprocessed to break a heavy, long-chained oil into a lighter short-chained one, by various forms of cracking such as fluid catalytic cracking, thermal cracking, and hydrocracking. The final step in gasoline production is the blending of fuels with different octane ratings, vapor pressures, and other properties to meet product specifications.





Oil refineries are large scale plants, processing from about a hundred thousand to several hundred thousand barrels of crude oil per day. Because of the high capacity, many of the units are operated continuously (as opposed to processing in batches) at steady state or approximately steady state for long periods of time (months to years). This high capacity also makes process optimization and advanced process control very desirable.';What happens if an oil refinery shuts down?
Depends on how it shuts down. A planned shutdown is done regularly to perform maintenance.





An emergency shutdown is a whole other thing. It will cost millions to clean out piping, pumps. furnaces and the like. Since it may cost the refinery manager his annual bonus, you can be sure that they want to avoid emergency shutdowns.

Name a stinky, dirty, Texas oil refinery town loaded to the teeth with ignorant, uneducated, white trash?

Too many to pick one.Name a stinky, dirty, Texas oil refinery town loaded to the teeth with ignorant, uneducated, white trash?
I ain't ever seen any ignorant,uneducated white trash any where, what does white trash look like? and I,ll keep my eyes open for them.racist!Name a stinky, dirty, Texas oil refinery town loaded to the teeth with ignorant, uneducated, white trash?
If you are looking for a family member or a b/f, you won't find one in Texas.
why you lookin for a boyfriend?

Wat r d additional qualifications requiredto fulfil d requirements of an oil refinery r petrochemical industry

I am instrumentation freashear i live in coimbatore, what are the extra courses(qualifications) that i have to do to ful fill the requirements of an oil refinery and petro chemical industry.Wat r d additional qualifications requiredto fulfil d requirements of an oil refinery r petrochemical industry
I am sorry I don't know where is Coimbatore but my answer is the same regardless of where you are as far as Instrumentation is concern:


Well to make yourself more '; marketable'; esp in the O%26amp;G or Petrochemical industries, it would be an added advantage if you possess working experiences or knowledge on:


1. PLC system ( Programmable Logic Controller )becuase in the petrochem manufacturing process many automations are PLC based,


2. some knowledge on process analysers, ( e.g. O2, pH, conductivity, gas, opacity analysers etc ),


3. know how to handle computer-based control system.Wat r d additional qualifications requiredto fulfil d requirements of an oil refinery r petrochemical industry
Being able to spell will help also.
  • windows mail
  • I'm trying to apply at a oil refinery (energy plant) ?

    I got my RSO card about two weeks and i have been searchinG high and low and been hitting dead ends. I am going for the fire watch postion, I live in compton California if anyone knows of any oil refinerys (energy plants) within my area or know how I can go about applying in order of getting a foot in the door please let me know=) i really need help





    THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!I'm trying to apply at a oil refinery (energy plant) ?
    You need to talk to someone in the industry, not a public forum.

    What is you opinion on buiding OIL Refinery in Dominica Island?

    Dominica needs it... How else would they store oil for their electricity and home cooking-fuel network???? Barbados has fuel tanks.... The United States has fuel tanks... Britain has fuel tanks.... Trinidad %26amp; Tobago have fuel tanks...





    Barbados can't join PetroCaribe because it would mean all of the oil infrastructure in Barbados would likely become the property of Venezuela.... Which likely would mean the privately owned Gas tanks and all.....What is you opinion on buiding OIL Refinery in Dominica Island?
    It sounds like a good place to me, far away from my home!What is you opinion on buiding OIL Refinery in Dominica Island?
    i am a dominican and proud to be one, dominica is known as the nature isle, so green and clean,it's beauty is unspoilt.By building an oil refinery here all that is going to change,i do not want an oil refinery in my country,there must be other ways in which we can develope Dominica.Our air,land and sea will be polluted and we would not be a tourist destination any more

    We are businessmen group and like to build a petroleum oil refinery factory at Kazakhstan, we like to know?

    list of American and Europe countries which are working for these activities....We are businessmen group and like to build a petroleum oil refinery factory at Kazakhstan, we like to know?
    We work on the finance side of this and we are connected to businessmen in Europe who have activities in Kazakhstan. Please contact us about your project

    How tall are the towers at the oil refinery at erith edible oils factory?

    The shadow of the tallest tower at Erith Edible Oils, Church Manorway, Erith, Kent appears to be about 200 meters long on Google Earth. Judging by the other shadows, the time of day is morning and the time of year is winter and the other shadows appear to be somewhat longer than the structures making them. So the height of the towers is probably between 130 meters and 170 meters. To get a more exact answer either contact Erith Edible Oils and ask them or reference an aviation map for Kent.