Course dates
Attend this three day course to better understand refinery economics. Including:
- World-wide crude oil supply and demand
- Important petroleum product demand trends
- Overview of refinery process technology
- Impact of market demand and crude oil quality on refinery configuration
- Refinery/petrochemical integration
- Refinery margin calculation
- How do refiners select crude oils
- Case study of new grassroots refinery
- Options for increasing refinery profitability
Course overview
This course presents an introduction to petroleum refining technology and economics. The focus is on transportation fuels refineries, however, petrochemical production and biofuels are also discussed. The first part of the program includes an overview of crude oil supply and petroleum product demand. This is followed with a description of refinery process technology. Key refining technologies are described such as crude oil distillation, heavy oil conversion options, hydrotreating, and catalytic reforming.
Although oil refineries have many similarities, each refinery is customized to most profitably supply a specific market. Profitable refinery operations involve many economic decisions, such as crude oil selection and production planning. These are important business processes critical for maintaining refinery competitiveness. The course also includes a case study example of a new refinery project. This session will include example calculations of capital costs, operating costs, and project economics. The final session of the course is a description of options for increasing refinery profitability such as new technology for maintaining more accurate planning models, integration with petrochemicals, and improving energy efficiency.
Teaching methodology
The course includes both classroom discussion and class problems. We recommend individuals attending the course bring laptop computers to the class.
Who should attend?
In addition to oil refining personnel, other individuals who interact with the industry will benefit from this course. This includes accounting, finance, insurance, petrochemical producers, oil refinery suppliers, and engineers who have limited refinery experience. A technical background is not required for course participants.
Day 1
Crude oil
The cost of crude oil is approximately 70-80% of the cost of operating refineries. Understanding crude oil reserves and characteristics is therefore important.
- World-wide crude supply
- Future production trends
- Crude oil pricing
Petroleum products
Environmental concerns are resulting in increasingly stringent transportation fuels specifications, and this has a significant impact on refinery operations. This session will review product consumption trends and key specifications.
- Product demand trends
- Gasoline
- Distillate
- Fuel oil
- Product specifications
- Gasoline
- Jet fuel
- Diesel
- Fuel oil
- Product pricing
- Refining centers
- Import/export parity
Crude oil quality
A discussion of crude oil composition and properties is presented in this session.
- Crude oil composition
- Typical elemental breakdown
- Hydrocarbon types
- Bulk crude oil properties
- API gravity
- Sulfur content
- Distillation range
- Other important properties
Refinery process technology
This is an overview of process technology, with a focus on heavy oil conversion options. The range of refinery process technology will be discussed. This session is divided into the following sections:
- Separation
- Distillation fundamentals
- Atmospheric distillation
- Vacuum distillation
- Gas plants
- Conversion Processes
- Hydrocracking
- Fluid catalytic cracking
Day 2
- Conversion Processes(Continued)
- Hydrocracking
- Fluid catalytic cracking
- Delayed coking
- Fluid coking
- Visbreaking
- Solvent deasphalting
- Resid hydrocracking
- Upgrading Processes
- Hydrotreating
- Catalytic reforming
- Isomerization
- Alkylation
- Supporting Processes
- Acid gas removal
- Sulfur recovery
- Hydrogen production
- Benzene Reduction
- Utilities and offsites
- Product blending
The technology is described along with important feedstock characteristics and typical product yields.
Refinery types, complexity
Refineries vary in type and complexity depending on many factors such as market demand and company investment objectives.
- Refinery types
- Topping
- Hydroskimming
- Cracking
- Coking
- Nelson complexity index
Day 3
Other related technology
A number of refineries around the world produce petrochemicals in addition to transportation fuels. The technology involved in producing these products are discussed. An overview of biofuels is also presented.
Refinery margins
Refiners use several types of refinery margins to describe their profitability. Each of these margins is described and how each is applied.
- Gross
- Variable
- Net
- Incremental
Refinery Planning and Economics
This session will begin with an overview of refinery economics modeling which involves the linear programming technique. Refinery planning applications are then discussed in detail.
- Linear programming
- Crude oil assays
- Refinery modeling
- Planning applications
- Crude oil evaluation
- Production planning
- Product blending
- Shutdown planning
- Configuration studies
- Technology evaluation
Best practices regarding model building, crude oil evaluation, and other key economic planning applications are also discussed.
Refinery project economics
A case study for a new refinery project is presented.
- Configuration study
- Utility balance
- Capital cost
- Operating cost
- Yearly cash flow projection
- Discounted rate of return
Options for Improving Refinery Profitability
This session will include a discussion of the several means refiners are using to improve profitability
- Refinery/petrochemical integration
- Supply chain business process improvement
- Energy efficiency
Summary and closing remarks
New York Hotel (energy), New York, United States
All Euromoney Energy Training courses are held at four or five star hotels. We strive to provide you with a training environment of the highest quality, to ensure that the whole learning experience exceeds your expectations.
Your training venue will be confirmed by one of our course administrators approximately 3-4 weeks before the course start date.
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David Geddes
Dave Geddes is an economics and planning consultant for the refining and petrochemical industry. His experience includes 20 years at Bechtel Corporation. He has worked on feasibility studies and economic evaluations of oil refineries and petrochemical plants in the U.S., Asia, the Middle East, and South America. While at Bechtel he also managed the group that developed, marketed, and supported the PIMS linear programming system that is now widely used for refinery and petrochemical economic studies and other planning applications.
Mr. Geddes received a B.S. in Petroleum Refining from the Colorado School of Mines, & an M.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Colorado.
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Course dates