petrotech journal december 2011

10TH INTERNATIONAL OIL & GAS CONFERENCE AND EXHIBITION

14th -17th October 2012, New Delhi www.petrotech.in

Hydrocarbon and Beyond: Changing Landscape

C O N T E N T

Editorial Board

Ashok Anand

Director General

Anand Kumar

Director & Editor

G Sarpal

Secretary

Suman Gupta

Manager

The views expressed by the authors are their

own, and do not neccessarily represent that of

the Petrotech.

Printed and published by

Petrotech at 601-603, Tolstoy House,

Tolstoy Marg, Connaught Place, New Delhi - 110 001

Dear Colleagues,

Of late, the so called ‘soft’ issues of business have taken centre-stage. While we maintain that the hydrocarbon business is ‘recession – proof’ in the sense that it is relatively insulated from global economic upheavals, we surely have a direct connect to these ‘soft issues’ that have the potential to radically transform our way of conducting business.

Corruption is an issue that is presently occupying mind-space globally in its myriad manifestations. Be it the ‘creative’ financial products that led to the financial crisis that is presently playing-out, or the more tangible issues being debated hotly in the country; business per se’ is perceived as disingenuous by the man on the street. The ‘Occupy Wall street’ campaign and its numerous avatars around the world prove that this man on the street is now willing to confront ‘high-business’ directly. It is indeed ironic that while Governments are broke, ‘high-business’ has loads of cash that it is unwilling or perhaps, unable, to deploy as the economic climate stagnates. So where does growth come from, if capital is not deployed efficiently?

Land acquisition is another issue for verticals like ours that require large land-banks and ‘rights of way’. If land is scarce, not because it is not available, but because the owners are unwilling to provide easy access, what happens to Greenfield projects? We will also need to factor-in the need for additional resources such as apex management’s time, higher cost, rehabilitation of the native population and socio – economic development around project sites. These resources would tantamount to ‘direct’ and not ‘optional’ cost, thereby driving project costs ‘North’. Whatever happens to Kyoto Protocol after Durban this year and Rio next year, it is abundantly clear that environmental issues will take primacy in Greenfield project development. Using ‘creative license’ with EIAs will increasingly be seen as ‘criminal’ intent by courts of law thereby inviting opprobrium. Clearly, the onus of designing and delivering a project to satisfy the word and spirit of environmental laws will rest on us. If this is an additional cost, so be it.

Assuring inclusive growth for society will no longer be an option; it will have to be integrated into the organisational DNA. The law will soon mandate a 2% of net profit spend on CSR. This mandate should not be seen as an encumbrance, but an opportunity to seamlessly integrate social aspirations into the organisation’s growth model. It is the emotional connect with society and the willingness to share prosperity equitably that will pay dividends going forward.

It would appear that a discussion on these ‘soft issues’ would be out of context in a journal dedicated to technology. Far from it, each of these issues will find resonance in the brief that will drive technology. Land issues entail design of technology with small footprints to minimise land requirement, use of virtual and networked command and control infrastructure to enable use of existing land-banks more efficiently and for harvesting project sites that are inhospitable. The environmental connect to technology is direct and is too well understood to need elaboration. The connect of domain technology to CSR is also fairly evident. Resources such as water and electric power for the populace in the vicinity of a project will have to be integrated into the project design while non – associated cost-effective technology for housing, sanitation and roads will need to developed and assimilated into the project construct as a deliverable. That leaves out corruption from the mix. Well, while the larger issue of driving organisational growth is fairly evident, a more subtle correlation is in terms of investing in fail-safe technology for mission-critical applications such as workers’ safety in general and oil-spill prevention and control and search and rescue infrastructure in particular.

In summation, a new paradigm driven by these ‘soft issues’ is emerging. If we cannot manage our corporate conscience; societal stakeholders will do it for us perforce. We therefore need to be proactive, accept these emerging trends and embrace them if business is to prosper going forward. It will be an additive cost, but without addressing these concerns, the extant business itself will be jeopardised.

A New Year is upon us and I hope 2012 brings in more stability, more clarity, more surety and more purpose in the way we conduct our business.

Here’s wishing you a Happy New Year.

Sudhir VasudevaChairman, PetrotechCMD ONGC

Foreword

JoP, October-December 2011 3

Message

Dear Patrons and readers,

First I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your continued patronage and partnership with PETROTECH society and it’s Journal. Your contribution really helps us to improve ourselves with every endeavor we make towards contributing to Indian Oil and Gas industry.

In appreciation of your association during the past years my sincere wishes to all for a very Happy New Year. May your New Year be filled with much joy, happiness and success and as an industry we always better ourselves from every preceding year. We look forward to working with you in the coming years and hope our relationship

continues for eternity.

2011 gave us all reasons to introspect our energy policies and industry dynamics. The oil industry was always volatile but the last year the speed at which events unfolded and the impact they had could hardly be predicted nor mitigated. From political uprising and turmoil in Middle East and North Africa (MENA), unstable financial markets and the Japanese nuclear disaster, rethinking of the nuclear emergence, and the rise of the consuming National Oil Companies (NOCs), 2011 was full of surprises. The uprising in Libya and the renewed production in Iraq did little to stabilize the world oil markets. Despite economic uncertainty, global oil prices remained stubbornly buoyant and are expected to remain so in the upcoming year, as predicted by both the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) and the International Energy Agency (IEA).

There were few underlying hopes also to pick from last year. If coal was fuel for the last Century, Natural gas is emerging the fuel for the next decades. Apart from big discoveries world over the unconventional gas sources are a major boost for our industry. Just couple of years back fears were looming large that world will run out fuel soon and now we are talking about abundance of Natural Gas, thanks to the technological breakthrough and high crude prices. In the recently concluded World Petroleum Congress in Doha, all four big majors Exxon Mobil, Shell, ConocoPhillips and BP confirmed the changing scenario, increasing role and availability of Natural Gas. But they voiced their concerns for meeting rapidly rising energy demand over the next few decades as it will require large investments, efficiency gains and practical use of renewable all put together. Year 2011 saw the record invest-ment in Oil and Gas industry of approximately USD 544 Billion. And year 2012 is set to break that record with an estimated investment of USD 600 Billion.

With record expected investment pouring in our industry, we are all set for an exponential growth. Hope we build upon the opportunity that this New Year is bringing.

Happy Reading !!!!

Naresh Kumar President, Petrotech & CMD, Deepwater Drilling & Industries Ltd

JoP, October-December 20114

Message

Before I pen down anything, I would like to wish all our readers, colleagues, friends, members, well wishers & their families A Very Happy and Prosperous New Year!

While we enter the New Year with zeal and new hopes, the 10th international oil and gas event Petrotech-2012 awaits to welcome us all. The theme of Petrotech-2012 is “Hydrocarbon & Beyond: Changing Landscape.” The event will be held from 14-17 October, 2012 at New Delhi.

This international exhibition and conference will focus on the hydrocarbon industry in the context of global trends and will provide a major platform for presentations and technical papers by experts as well as in-depth discussion and debate on the areas related to the theme Hydrocarbon & Beyond – changing landscape. Participation by a galaxy of ministers and CEOs from across the globe will make this a crucial conference to attend and learn about the latest developments pertaining to hydrocarbon sector.

This conference also brings a great opportunity to explore areas of growth in petroleum technology relating to various activities of upstream, midstream and downstream industry, research & development, information technology, safety, health and environ-ment management in the oil & gas sector in addition to providing opportunity for networking on one to one basis, on personal level, from the corporate business point of view and for exchange of knowledge and technology.

The Petrotech conference series have gathered momentum and have emerged as a movement uniting the various sectors of hydrocarbon industry. Each Petrotech conference has been unique in its approach and so will be Petrotech-2012.

The Year 2011 witnessed many events like Apple Inc. launched the second generation tablet computer iPad 2 powered by a 1GHz dual-core processor and has revolutionized tablet technology.

Japan was hit by a high magnitude earthquake and tsunami killing over 15000 and damaging four of its nuclear power plants. You will recall that eruption of Chile’s Puyehue volcano caused heavy air traffic suspension across South America, Australia and New Zealand.

The United Nations announced that world population reached the seven billion mark on October 31, 2011 while the result of Indian Census 2011 put India’s population at 1.21 billion. The countries ranking highest in world population are People Republic of China, India, United States, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Russia and Japan. Over 58% of the world popula-tion lives in these countries. Population explosion is a major concern in Asia as about seven of these ten countries are in Asia.

Side by side India’s exports crossed the target of $ 200 billion mark in the first 11 months of the 2010-11. Exports jumped by 49.8% year-on-year during February to $ 23.6 billion taking the April-January 2010-11 figure to $ 208.2 billion-an increase of 31.4% over the previous year. India and Bangladesh signed a pact ending their forty years of border demarcation dispute.

The Formula One race took the world by storm whereas the Lokpal movement - India against corruption surprised everyone and became the household name. The Lokpal bill to this effect has just been passed in Lok Sabha.

In 2011 when there was uncertainty in the production of Libyan oil, it caused prices to rise by 20% for a short span of time thereby creating temporary energy crises. Political upheavals also added fuel to the fire. It is said that there is around four trillion barrels of oil below the ground which still needs to be tapped. The first Indian oil well drilled at Digboi in 1889 wasn't far behind the Drakes well in Pennsylvania in 1859. From the time oil was first found and until now only 25% of the available oil has been produced. Thus if we use this wonderful resources economically, it can last for few more centuries. The big question is can we produce this massive reserve which is still underground. The simple answer which comes to my mind is “NO” at least not with the present day technology. Therefore, the answer lies in upgrading and innovating new technology every time and laying more and more emphasis and encouraging more and more research and development efforts.

In conclusion, 2011 has been the year which has seen many ups and downs, man-made disasters, nature's fury, ethnic conflicts, united uprising, political uncertainties and the events that have shaken the economy all over the world. We only hope that such events will not happen in 2012 and the New Year will bring peace, prosperity & stability for the benefit of humanity at large.

Wishing you once again A Very Happy New Year!

Ashok Anand Director General, Petrotech


On 1st January, 2012, the first public sector oil refinery at Guwahati, completed 50 years of its continuous evolution. Having joined this refinery, as GET ,way back in 70s, I have witnessed this refinery to evolve from a pupa to a beautiful butterfly. It is not only been the fountainhead of oil refining of IndianOil Corporation, but has provided ground for development of indigenous oil refining technologies and talents. On this occasion, the Team Petrotech extends its heartiest greetings to IndianOil.

Energy is the essence of life, which, the essential element of evolution, for continuous improvement, change, adaptation, growth, and survival. However, all these process of evolution happened only through unending innovation. Nature has, thus, ingrained innovation in the DNA of every living organism, with which it has survived for millenniums. Those, who could not innovate, became extinct.

Oil has been main source of energy, mobility, growth and development for over a century, and it will remain so for long. Most of countries are striving for their energy security, they are also concerned with impending effects of climate change. These real concerns for energy security and climate change, has set a new paradigm for scientific innovations for making alternative and renewable energy, available and affordable.

The accelerated the pace of research and development , over last two decades has made shale gas to emerge as a great potential for providing energy security to many countries, and we know its US and Canada story, which shall be soon repeated by Poland, China and Mexico. India having great potential, is all set to exploit its own potential which should be sufficient to meet Indian demand for over two centuries. However, in order to overcome the environmental concerns linked to exploitation of shale gas , the investment on R&D in this area has to be accelerated. India can take lead in improving upon the existing technologies, which shall also help increase investment on R&D, as well as developing talent for meeting future challenges. It will be discussed in greater details in the next Petrotech R&D Conclave, at Goa on 6th and 7th January, 2012.

In the area of down steam R&D, Indian Institute of Petroleum and IndianOil- R&D had made very focussed effort, which resulted in development of many novel technologies. This issue for JoP, brings out details of these offering of technologies from them.

Another thrust area for our scientific endeavours has to be renewable energy, with greater focus on the Solar and Bio energy, which has, again, great potential for gaining energy security of our country.

Innovation in improving performance and asset reliability is extremely important for continuous improve net and cost efficiency of our operations. This issue of JoP, also shares excellent case studies and articles on asset reliability, which shall certainly benefit our readers.

The Journal of Petrotech, provides a platform for sharing your innovative work. We look forward to continued interest in this journal and sharing your experiences and innovations for the benefit of the oil industry. We have been encouraged by your feedback, and we look forward to your comments on this issue of JoP, as well.

I am sure, you remember the last date of 31st January, 2012, for submission of the abstract of your technical papers for the Petrotech-2012 (www.petrotech.in), which is slated for 14-17 October next year.

As we enter the year 2012, with greater hope and aspiration to excel in our business of innovation for creating wealth, improving our operations, technologies and quality of the life of people, we find a lot to be done in the years ahead for making our industry sustainable, and faster. We have to increase the rate of change. To change and adopt to new needs and environmental demands is the only way to survive the change.. The year 2011, has left behind many lessons to learn from the geo-political upheavals to natural, calamities. We have to innovate new ways faster and ahead of the impending change.

Our shadow walks away from us, but our actions leave behind its imprint forever. We must, therefore, in the coming year, increase investment in innovation for making the existing technologies greener and greener technologies.Wishing a greener new year, filled with the knowledge that gives us everlasting happiness,Sincerely,

(Anand Kumar)

Editorial


Petrotech Welcomes

New Corporate Leaders of Oil and Gas Indutry

Shri Shrikant P Gathoo has taken charge as Director (Human Resources) of Bharat Petroleum Corpn. Ltd. with ef-fect from 3rd November 2011. He holds a Master’s Degree in Personnel Man-agement from the University of Poona and is a LEAD Fellow. Prior to this he was holding a position of Executive Director (Human Resource Services) with the Corporation. During his tenure of more than 25 years in the Corpora-tion he has also held several key posi-tions, which includes Head of Human Resource Development, Head of Lu-bricants Business, Head of Integrated Information systems & he was also part of Project ENTRANS, SAP implemen-tation project. Prior to joining BPCL he was working in HR functions of BHEL & NTPC.

In a career spanning over three decades Shri S.P. Gathoo has several achieve-ments to his credit. He was associated with the team which handled one of the most successful SAP Implementations in the country, besides he was also in-strumental in the launch of MAK um-brella Brand & Employee Self Service Portal. He was also accountable for Corporate Social Responsibility proj-ect in the areas of Education & Water resource management.

Mr. S.P. Gathoo takes over as Director (HR), BPCL

Mr. Makrand Nene is Marketing Di-rector of IndianOil, India’s largest commercial enterprise and the highest ranked Indian company in the pres-tigious Fortune ‘Global 500’ listing. With over three decades experience in the oil industry, Mr. Nene heads the entire Marketing Division, driving the largest network of supply and distribu-tion of petroleum products to one of the largest energy markets in the world. With a Graduation in Mechanical Engi-neering, Mr. Nene is an alumnus of the Advanced Management Course of the prestigious Management Development Institute at Gurgaon, besides being a participant of the institute’s Faculty Development Programme.

Mr. Nene has worked in a cross sec-tion of major marketing functions in IndianOil, from the time he joined as a Sales Officer in 1978. His rich experi-ence in LPG Marketing, General Op-erations, Shipping & Commercial and Supply & Distribution was tapped by the Company when he was entrusted with mapping and implementing the entire Supply Chain strategy in 2004. This was a time when the volatil-ity in global prices was beginning to impact and IndianOil had to optimize the supply processes and benchmark

it to global standards. Leading a revo-lutionary overhaul, Mr Nene spear-headed the logistics transformation of IndianOil during the transition to deregulation period, successfully le-veraging pioneering IT interventions.

Posted as the Executive Director (Supplies) at the apex Marketing Head Quarters in Mumbai, Mr. Nene put in place innovative systems and pro-cesses that helped IndianOil emerge as a “Least cost supplier of high qual-ity energy products’. The optimum productivity of the lean and rapidly evolving supply chain built under Mr. Nene’s leadership helped in retain-ing IndianOil’s dominant presence in the high volume Consumer business besides providing it the operational teeth to enhance the growing Retail market. Growing on the back of this infrastructure was the expansion in IndianOil’s Kisan Seva Kendra retail outlets which emerged as vital differ-entiators in the battle for market share.

With a keen understanding of the glob-al dynamics in product pricing, supply constraints and market demands, Mr. Nene spearheaded the coordination of supplies with RIL, Essar Oil and MRPL and helped in efficiently inte-grating both Public and Private sector oil companies in meeting the energy needs of India. His contributions were repeatedly acknowledged by the in-dustry with several national awards for ‘Supply Chain Excellence”. Mr. Nene is not only passionate about learn-ing but also takes part in mentoring a cross-section of executives through structured training programmes and meets. Widely travelled in India and abroad, Mr. Nene has presented semi-nal papers in many seminars, confer-ences and business meetings.

Mr. M. Nene, Director (Marketing), IndianOil

Golden Jubilee of Guwahati Refinery1962 - 2012


Golden Jubilee

Fountain head of the national oil refining in Inde-pendent India enters its Golden jubilee year on 1st January, 2012 – the day country would once again recall and feel the ecstasy, sense of achievement,

pride, and euphoria that hit the nation, when its first prime minister Jawahar Lal Nehru, dedicated this first national oil refinery to the nation .

Ever since, Guwahati refinery has been a source of learn-ing, knowledge, intellectual and energy prosperity, and human resources for the country’s growing oil refining industry. Starting here with a 0.75 mmtpa refinery, India-nOil today has grown to 10 oil refineries cutting across the country’s geography reaching 65.7 mmtpa refining capacity. For the Guwahati refinery, upgrading and out-performing itself through continuous improvement has been its mantra for growth and serving the nation, since its birth, 50 years ago.

For most people on earth, Assam is a cup of tea. For oth-ers, it is the drop that fuelled India’s hydrocarbon dream. Thanks to the flourishing tea estates, by 1850, the world came to be familiar with Assam’s richness. The focus gradually shifted to Assam’s subterranean wealth, yield-ing coal and the most coveted of natural resources – crude oil.

The discovery of oil in Upper Assam marked the birth of the petroleum industry not only in the Indian subcontinent but in the Asia east of the Arabian Peninsula. The industry’s journey began in 1867 when oil was first struck at Makum in eastern Assam. It graduated to producing petroleum products in 1901 with the establishment of Digboi Refinery - world’s oldest operational Refinery.

India’s petroleum wealth was being controlled by interna-tional companies. The trend continued even after indepen-dence in 1947 making the Government of India think in terms of setting up national Oil companies for securing self reliance and security in oil and gas – crucial resources for growth and development of the country. The outcome was the formation of Indian Refineries Limited (IRL) in August 1958 for crude oil refining. The following year, in June 1959, was born Indian Oil Company Limited for the sale of products of state-owned refineries.

The hunt for an ideal site for India’s first public sector Refin-ery had begun earlier in 1959. Assam was an obvious choice for the nation-builders; the state after all accounted for the en-tire 250,000 tons of India’s annual domestic oil production at that time. The search ended in March 1959 at Noonmati on the eastern edge of Guwahati. The site was on the southern bank of Brahmaputra, some 500km west of Digboi.

Built with Romanian technical and financial assistance, Guwahati Refinery with an installed refining capacity of 0.75 MMTPA was completed in a record 22-months time overcoming the communication and logistics barriers and bottlenecks of that time. The challenges included redraw-ing the designs by Rumanian experts – they were not used to working in seismic zones and difficult soil condition – and airlifting steel from Kolkata. The then Chief Engineer M Ramabrahmam said: "Our Rumanian advisors, having got exasperated at various delays, proclaimed that it was impossible to achieve the target, but we did it." Doing the impossible was attributed to the passion of being involved with India's first PSU Refinery, which later got ingrained in the DNA of IndianOil Corporation, through its core values of “Care, Passion, Innovation and Trust”.

Golden Guwahati Refinery: The Fountainhead of IndianOil Refining Turns 50B P DasGeneral Manager, Guwahati Refinery

The completion of the Refinery before schedule augured well for India’s march towards self-sufficiency in the energy sector. Aptly, Prime Minister Jawaha-rlal Nehru, who believed a country’s strength lay in producing its own oil, dedicated Guwahati Refinery to the na-tion as a New Year gift on 1 January 1962.

Although, the refinery was designed based on proven state of art Rumanian technology, and Indian engineers and operators were trained in Rumania for a year in engineering, operations and maintenance aspects, yet first year of operation was extremely challenging. Apart from corrosion, leakage of units and unplanned shutdowns, a problem emerged with the water intake facil-ity – the Refinery required 4,000 cubic meters of water per hour for smooth operation – due to heavy silting in the Brahmaputra. This was tackled suc-cessfully and then the Chinese attacked India to trigger a state of emergency. The military drill that most employees went through in 1962 prepared them for two wars with Pakistan in 1965 and 1971.

By 1964, the Refinery overcame much of the operational challenges in its three primary process units – Crude Distil-lation Unit (CDU), Kerosene Treating Unit (KTU) and Delayed Coker Unit (DCU). It is surprising that the refinery, 50 years ago, was provided with vapor recovery and blow-down recovery sys-

tems, which has regained great impor-tance fro the sustainability of refinery operations today.

The year, 1964, was also significant be-cause of the merger of IRL and Indian Oil Company Ltd into the Indian Oil Corporation Ltd (IOCL) on September 1st. Later that year, the 435km Guwahati-Siliguri Pipe Line, Indian Oil’s first prod-uct pipeline from the Refinery to Siliguri in West Bengal, was commissioned.

From primarily producing motor spirit and kerosene, the Refinery graduated to liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) in 1971. It went on to produce 200 MT of LPG per month, way above the initial market demand forecast of 20 MT. The next major additions to the Refinery before its rebirth were the Effluent Treatment Plant (1976) for ensuring treated efflu-ent quality and the Naphtha Splitting Facility for providing feedstock to the petrochemical complex at Bongaigaon in western Assam.

Guwahati Refinery became a part of the growth that made IOCL, a Ma-haratna Company and India’s larg-est commercial enterprise, holding today the 98th rank in the Fortune 500 list. Guwahati Refinery has kept pace with this growth, often setting the trend in safety, management and production of quality, eco-friendly fuels. The Refinery has been meeting Bharat Standard III specifications for Motor Spirit and High Speed Diesel,

besides producing LPG, ATF, LDO, RPC and Sulphur.

Guwahati Refinery: Cradle of technological Innovations

Despite its technological limitations, Guwahati Refinery kept India’s hydro-carbon flag aflutter high. But it wasn’t until the first global oil shock in mid seventies, that it launched the Guwaha-ti refinery to the next level with a slew of modernization and capacity aug-mentation. Until such time, the CDU and DCU of this refinery has been the source of indigenous design engineer-ing capability development.

The Refinery’s performance improved after its capacity was enhanced to 1.0 MMTPA in 1986. Switch over to digi-tal controls, installation of ISOSIV unit for producing unleaded motor spirit and commissioning of the INDMAX in 2003 - country’s first indigenous RFCC technology, developed by IndianOil R&D and the flare gas recovery system helped raise the bar.

Today, CDU is technologically at par with the best in the world. So are the Naphtha Splitter (setup in early 80s to improve MS octane and diesel produc-tion), the Delayed Coking Unit and the Hydro-treating Unit along with SRU(2002), for improving quality of High Speed Diesel by removal of Sul-fur & cetane boosting and production of Kerosene and Aviation Turbine Fuel.


The old KTU- based on the Edulino Process, was great learning place in handling toxic chemicals, extraction process, and in maintenance and op-eration of gas compressors, which has since been dismantled. The INDMAX unit for maximising LPG, has been a big relief for this north east part of the country.

The upgraded refinery conformed to the highest international safety stan-dards and an integrated management system that meets global ratings such as ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 14064. The standards have been set higher for the newest projects – the New Coke Drum with coke cutting system, automatic heading and de-heading and a new bridge crane – scheduled to be in place by 2012, the Refinery's 50th year.

The Refinery has also pioneered pro-duction of green needle coke, based IOCL R&D technology, in the year 2001. Due to logistics problems, however, now the feed for needle coke is sent from Guwahati Refinery to IOCL’s Bongaigaon Refinery for production of this high demand, value added product.

One can attribute the sound health of Guwahati Refinery to exemplary team-work, sense of ownership, ingrained core values of Care, passion, innova-tion, trust; perfect man-machine co-ordination and encouragement of in-novative ideas to tide over challenges. Total Productive Maintenance or TPM inculcating a sense of attachment to the tiniest of parts in the Refinery has also been a major factor besides raising the bar for continuously breaking and set-ting benchmarks in excellence by the GRians.

That an organization performs best with a happy workforce is best exemplified by the Refinery. It boasts of some of the best residential complexes in eastern India besides sporting and recreational facilities for all age groups.

Environment and Social Responsibility

Right since its inception, GRians has been conscious of the fact that devel-opment cannot be at the cost of the

environment, society and the health of the people around. Guwahati Re-finery has been endowed with vapor recovery system right from its in-ception. In the year 1976 it commis-sioned a state of art effluent treat-ment plant (ETP), a move, which, was considered ahead of its time, as was the upgrading of ETP with time, the latest being in 2007 for adhering to stricter norms.

Apart from mechanized processing of accumulated oily sludge and reuse of treated effluent, the Refinery set in place the Online Ambient Air Quality monitoring station in 2008. With the commissioning of the Flare Gas Re-covery System in 2008 flare loss has become negligible. The ENCON ef-forts of team Guwahati Refinery has resulted in reduction of MBN from 71.0 in 2007-08 to 61.0 in 2010-11, which is an great feat achieved by any refinery of such small capacity and legacy.

Guwahati Refinery has also earned the trust and respect of the local people through inclusive initiatives under Cor-porate Social Responsibility scheme of IndianOil.

The focus has been on healthcare, education, providing potable water and generating opportunities for self-employment. The Refinery shoulders the responsibility for skill develop-ment of unemployed youth and wom-en through various workshops and classroom inputs. We have, for this

purpose, set up a Vocational Train-ing Centre at Noonmati where the underprivileged are taught computer, trained in stitching, sewing, weaving and other vocations.

Promotion of sports through identifica-tion of hidden talents and developing them through training and coaching, is one of our thrust areas for the youth.

Epilogue

Thousands of years ago, Guwahati was known as Pragjyotishpura or the Light of the Orient, where peo-ple from far and near came seeking enlightenment. In the modern India, it is Guwahati refinery, which has been the fountainhead of knowledge, experiment, innovation and talents which has enriched the Indian oil re-fining for five decades. It has been the cradle fro indigenous technological breakthrough, its demonstration and commercialization.

It has indeed been a golden run for Guwahati Refinery, fuelling the imag-ination, confidence, trust and faith the IndianOil people in competing with best in oil refining around the globe. This faith is the source of inspiration, fire and energy, the Refinery treasures in its heart to keep excelling for the next 50 years.

Come and join us in our yearlong cel-ebration of our Golden run.


The refiners across the globe are facing many chal-lenges at this time. The volatility in crude oil and product prices is compounded with decreasing availability of lighter and sweet crude oils. As the

refining margin continues to be low, the refiners are forced to make changes in refinery configurations, unit modifications and metallurgical upgradation to process heavier and sour crude oils as well as high acid crudes to leverage the rela-tively lower prices of these crude oils compared to lighter ones.

Another major challenge to the refiner is the increasing prod-uct quality requirement and stricter emission regulations. While the demand for distillate products continues to grow, the demand for fuel oil is diminishing with many industries switching to gas in place of fuel oil. The impending lower sulphur specification in fuel oil is another cause of concern to the refiners.

The refining industry has always been meeting the challeng-es in the past with focused R&D and bringing out innovative solutions. The solution to current problems lies in develop-ing processes that convert heavier ends to distillates and fur-ther lighter ends as well as technologies that are cleaner in itself while providing cleaner products.

IndianOil R&D started the research work in the area of “Re-fining technology” in 1985 and within a short span of 20-25 years has not only developed expertise in providing techni-cal services to its own refineries like catalyst selection & performance monitoring, trouble shooting, revamp studies

etc but also developed a series of technologies that can add value to the refining process.

Indmax Technology

Indmax technology, which upgrades residue to light olefins like Propylene and high octane gasoline, was developed and demonstrated at Guwahati Refinery with a unit capacity of 100, 000 MTPA. The unit has been operating successfully since 2003 with a heavy feed of CCR upto 4% providing substantial contribution to the refining margin.

The product yields obtained from this unit under Propylene and Gasoline mode are given below:

Table

Now, this technology is being globally licensed by M/s Lummus Technology Inc., USA (a CB&I Company) under a Cooperation Agreement. While IOCL will provide basic process design, Lummus will provide Basic Engineering

Technology Offering of IndianOil R&D: Concept to CommissioningS RajagopalIndian Oil Corporation; R&D centre

Novel Indigenous Technology

Indmax Product yields, Wt% of feed

LPG 30 - 50

Gasoline 20 - 40

Propylene 12 – 27

Butylenes 10 – 20

Ethylene 3 – 14

Package employing their proprietary efficient hardware components.

A 4.17 MMTPA Indmax unit is under implementation at Paradip Refinery of IOCL and is expected to be commis-sioned by 2013.

Another unit of 0.74 MMTPA capacity is under active consideration at Bon-gaigoan Refinery of IndianOil.

Salient Features

• Employs high riser outlet temp (ROT) of more than 530°C and high catalyst to oil ratio (C/O) of more than 12.

• Single stage full burn Regenerator; Catalyst cooler not required upto 6% feed CCR

• Employs proprietary catalyst system with low coke and dry gas make, higher metal tolerance and high se-lectivity towards light olefins,

• Highly efficient feed nozzle, strip-per internal and cyclone system

Advantages

• Highly attractive yields of LPG and light olefins (ethylene, propylene and butylenes) yield

• Higher octane gasoline (RON 95 to 104) containing higher BTX aro-matics

• Capability to handle wide range of feed stocks, starting from hy-drotreated VGO to residue with 10 wt% CCR

• Operability at wide range of severi-ties with a given hardware to maxi-mize either light olefins or high oc-tane gasoline depending on refiner’s objective

• High coke and dry gas selectivity with proprietary catalyst

• Lower catalyst consumption owing to lower regenerator temperature with a given feedstock and excellent metal tolerance of catalyst

DHDS/ DHDT Technology

In view of growing importance of Hydroprocessing and to achieve lead-ership in developing, adopting and assimilating state-of-the-art tech-nologies for competitive advantage, IndianOil-R&D initiated a systematic program to build up knowledge base

in hydroprocessing technology. With such knowledge base developed over a period of time, IndianOil-R&D de-veloped its Diesel Hydrodesulfuriza-tion (DHDS)/ Hydrotreating (DHDT) technology.

Under an agreement with EIL, while IOCL will provide basic process de-sign, EIL will provide Basic Engineer-ing Package.

A grass root unit of 1.2 MMTPA DHDT has been recently commissioned at Bongaigaon Refinery of IOCL in Aug, 2011 for producing diesel meeting BS-IV norms (Sulfur < 50 ppm and Cetane number of more than 51).

A comparison of the unit performance vis-à-vis other DHDT units processing similar feedstock is given below:

Salient Features

• Capable to produce product meeting Euro-V spec

• Improvement of cetane No by 7-8 units

• T-95 reduction by 5-8 deg c • Proprietary Reactor internals of EIL

design. • Proprietary DHDS/DHDT catalyst

system of IOCL

Light Naphtha Isomerisation Technology

IndianOil R&D is also licensing Light Naphtha Isomerization Technology for converting the linear C5, C6 paraffins (pentane and hexane) to corresponding branched isomers having higher octane number and also saturating almost all the benzene. The drop in octane due to benzene saturation gets compensated by the isomerization of paraffins.

For this technology also, IndianOil R&D will provide the basic design, while EIL will prepare the BDEP.

Xylene Isomerisation plant at Bongaig-aon Refinery of capacity 115 TMTPA has been converted to Light Naphtha Isomerisation plant and successfully commissioned in Sept’2011. The per-formance of the plant vis-à-vis the de-sign is given under:

Salient Features

• Robust zeolite based catalyst – can tolerate sulphur and moisture natu-rally present in naphtha

• Moderate temperature operation• RON gain > 15 units • Isomerization & benzene saturation

Unit-1 Unit-2 BGR

Design Operating Design Operating Design Operating

WABT (°C) 363 316 385 (R-in) / 408 (R-out)

322 360 296

Pressure (kg/cm2g) 84.5 89 103.4 102 106 104

LHSV (h-1) 0.93 0.98 0.85 0.93 0.6 0.33

Feed Sulfur, wt% 0.24 0.2 0.21 0.155 0.17 0.15

Feed Cetane index Cetane No 43

39.5

42

41.7

42 45

Product Sulfur, ppm 500 48 500 29 43 < 10

Product Cetane index Ceatne No. 48.7

43

48.5

46

52 51

Table

Design Actual

Benzene in fresh feed, wt% 5.54 4 - 5

Benzene in product , wt% Nil Nil

Delta RON gain 16 15


occurs in the single reactor with same catalyst

• Benzene in final isomerate is almost nil

• Negligible sulfur in the product isomerate

• Ideal for retrofitting idle fixed bed units in refineries

Advantages

• Feed drying & desulfurization are not mandatory, reducing capital in-vestment

• Ease of start up as elaborate drying is not required

• Injection of corrosive chloride agent is not required, eliminating the need for caustic scrubbing of effluent gases

• Fresh feed with benzene as high as 5 wt% can be handled

• In-situ catalyst regeneration with long cycle time and long ultimate catalyst life

• Much simpler process scheme with single reactor instead of lead-lag re-actor configuration

• Design and engineering expertise of EIL

Needle Coke Technology

Needle Coke is a premium grade, high value petroleum coke used in the manu-facturing of graphite electrodes of very low Coefficient of Thermal Expansion (CTE) for the electric arc furnaces in the steel industry. Only few companies in the world manufacture Needle Coke using own proprietary technology. In-

dianOil R&D has developed a technol-ogy for production of Needle Coke from low value heavier hydrocarbon streams without any major feed pre-treatment.

Production of Needle Coke requires specific feedstocks, coking condi-tions and calcination conditions. The hardware employed is similar to that of conventional Delayed Coker. Any heavier streams available in the refin-ery of lower sulfur content can be con-sidered as the feed depending on the type of hydrocarbon molecules pres-ent. The optimum set of process condi-tions are decided by the characteristics of the feedstock through pilot plant experiments. The coke is subsequently calcined in rotary calciner at specific operating conditions.

Salient features

• Uses heavier petroleum streams available in refinery without major pre-treatment.

• Employs existing Delayed Coker unit hardware.

• Operating window based on feed characteristics.

• Production of Needle Coke with CTE of less than 1.1x10-6 /oC and real density more than 2.12 gm/cc

• Significant improvement in refinery margin owing to very high price of Needle Coke

FCC Catalyst Additives

For overcoming the limitations in FCC catalysts in producing LPG beyond

certain limit, the additives made with ZSM-5 zeolite are in practice from late 80s. These additives are available with zeolite content ranging from 12-40 wt%. However, commercial additives do have limitation in upgrading of bot-toms beyond a certain limit and in spite of having higher zeolite content, don’t produce adequate LPG rich in propyl-ene proportional to the zeolite content.

Additive Description

i-MAX formulations were developed with judicious combination of acidic and basic phosphates, “Zeolite stabili-zation technology” and silica-alumina matrix leading to new products named as

• i-MAX Premium• i-MAX Supreme • i-MAX Ultra These products have superior per-formance characteristics and can be chosen depending on refinery specific operational requirements. i-MAX se-ries additives are manufactured by M/s Sud Chemie India Ltd under licensing agreement

Salient Features

• Highest LPG yield per unit zeolite content

• Lower undesired heavy end hydro-carbon yield

• Enhanced gasoline octane number. • Enhanced propylene yield• Superior attrition index and excel-

lent other physical properties Commercial performance

• Superior performance over com-mercially available products.

• 500 MT of i-MAX series ZSM-5 additives sold by M/s SCIL under competitive global tenders.

• Prestigious NPMP award for com-mercialization of indigenous ZSM-5 additive technology.

DHDS/ DHDT Catalyst Technology

Hydrotreating technologies employ ro-bust high-performance catalysts, which can produce ultra low-sulfur diesel (ULSD) meeting the required cetane and other quality criteria. Such catalyst recipes are well guarded and available

Simplified Process Flow Diagram of Isomerisation Unit


only from select commercial catalyst suppliers.

IOC R&D’s Diesel Hydrodesulfurization / Hydrotreating Catalyst, INDICAT-DH-IV, is suitable for production of diesel with 10-50 ppm sulphur at appropriate operating conditions. The catalyst was scaled up and commercially manufac-tured at SCIL. The commercial operation of the catalyst is successfully established through plant demonstration in CPCL and is in operation since June 2009.

Catalyst Description

INDICAT-DH-IV is NiMo based cata-lyst in 1.2 mm dia trilobe extrudate. The catalyst is designed for ultra deep de-sulfurization of middle distillates. The highly dispersed active components and tailored support properties enables high intrinsic activity of the catalyst.

Salient Features

• Novel high active Ni-Mo catalyst for middle distillates

• Optimal and efficient promoter sys-tem for high intrinsic activity

• Nano size high active Type-II sites• Optimized physico-chemical char-

acteristics• High resistance against deactivation• Consistent quality of manufacturing

by novel preparation approach• Good mechanical properties suit-

able for commercial utilization. Commercial performance

• Easy start-up and activation • Consistent sulfur reduction from

1.71 w% in the diesel to < 35 ppmw at moderate operating conditions

• 10 ppmw sulphur by process param-eter optimization

• Diesel Cetane improvement of 6-7 units even at moderate pressures of 50-55 bar

• Flexibility for use in Vacuum Gas Oil desulfurization with over 90% sulphur reduction

• Robustness of the catalyst to with-stand changes in the operational se-verity

• Lower deactivation rate and in-creased catalyst life

Conclusion

IndianOil R&D has developed several technologies within a span of 20-25 years since start of research work in Refining Technology. These technolo-gies have been demonstrated at com-

Sh. S. Rajagopal is a Post Graduate in Chemical Engineering from IIT, Chennai and has more than 30 years of experi-ence in Petroleum Refining. He joined IOCL in 1980 and since then held various positions in Gujarat, Mathura & Barauni Refineries and in Technical & Project Department in Refineries Head Quarters at New Delhi. Currently, he is In-charge of Refining Technology Group in R&D Centre of IOCL. He has a rich experience of process engineering and has contrib-uted to capacity enhancement, yield & energy improvement, value addition, safety and environment in IOC Refineries. email: [email protected]

S Rajagopal

mercial scale and are being licensed through licensing partners.

IOC (R&D) has rich knowledge and expertise in the respective domains for technical services, trouble shooting combined with state of the art pilot plant and analytical testing facilities. We also have a strong Applied Metallurgy group who can provide inspection services as well as provide material failure analysis as well as undertake RLA studies. We can also provide services in selection of catalysts.

Our licensing partners have rich ex-perience in process design, trouble shooting and technical services. Our technology offering will be “Total Solution” from concept to Commis-sioning and after sale services.


Abstract

The current hydrocarbon value chain – from oil exploration, production refining to marketing has become a highly inte-grated process and is being increasingly expected to deliver fuels at reasonable cost to drive economies. The industry is currently faced with several challenges and undoubtedly is expected to face unprecedented challenges in future. None the less, it contributes a significant portion to the GDP of a nation.

The challenges, which this industry is currently facing and is likely to face, are unstable crude prices, significant price differential between light and heavy crudes, shifting product demands, reducing fuel oil uptake etc. In addition, there is a moving target for purity of petroleum products and need to synergistically utilize other energy sources, particularly, bioresources.

The future refineries would have to be necessarily smart in terms of understanding these challenges and to be able to adopt their designs and operations to take advantage of the above. For example, high conversion processes would be needed to take advantage of low price of heavy crudes, maxi-mize energy efficiency, minimize CO2 footprint and thus en-courage use of hydrogen free technologies. There is also a need to synergistically integrate current operations with pet-rochemical production while allowing for the high volatility of this market.

Lastly, in any refining operation, there are several by-product streams, which are considered to be of low value. These streams need to be looked at for value addition as they can bring significant impact to the refinery bottom line. The ef-

forts made at Indian Institute of Petroleum (IIP), Dehradun for meeting the above challenges are covered in this paper.

Introduction

Global energy demand currently is around 225 million bar-rels oil equivalent per day (Fig.-1), with an average annual increase during the last 25 years of about 1.5 %. At a global level, crude meets about a third of this demand, with natural gas and coal satisfying 50 % in about equal proportion, and the rest being met by biomass, nuclear, hydroelectric, wind and solar energy. The general trend for product demand is significant growth of the overall transportation fuel market together with a shrinkage of the gasoline market in paral-lel with a remarkable increase in the demand for distillates particularly for automotive diesel and reduction in consump-tion of heavy fuel oil. As far as product specifications is con-cerned, the petroleum refining industry is experiencing a sea change in production environment since last decade. Due to increased environmental awareness the product specifica-tions as well as emission standards from refinery are becom-ing more and more stringent and refineries are also becom-ing conscious towards emissions of green house gases. On the other hand the crude quality is deteriorating particularly with respect to sulphur and API gravity. Thus to meet the low sulphur specifications there is increasing dependence on hy-drogen which in turn is making the refining more and more expensive and the margins will not only depend upon the crude price but also be governed by hydrogen production price. With the existing infrastructure, the refiners are tak-ing efforts to meet these new product specifications which needs substantial investment for up gradation. Unfortunately, the returns on these investments have generally been low, or sometimes negative.

Continuous Innovations at Indian Institute of Petroleum: A Short Preview

M O GargCSIR-Indian Institute of Petroleum, Dehradun

Technology Updates

Coming to future refining scenario, it is envisaged that over the next 20 -30 years, competitive pressures and chang-ing societal requirements will dramati-cally reshape the refinery. It will be-come more like a chemical plant. This refinery conversion will require devel-opment of innovative technologies and more in-depth knowledge of the exist-ing technologies. For each application, several alternative technologies are available ; each having advantage or disadvantage over other. It is very dif-ficult to find a single optimum solution for all the refineries. Moreover, inter-national prices of crude and products, the tariff structures and the domestic demand/ supply balance are outside the control of the Indian refiner. The refiner can only improve his competitiveness and margins by optimizing the other factors which are under his control Some of the strategies which the refin-ers can consider for margin improve-ment and make themselves competitive are presented in this paper.

Value addition to the refinery streams

Value addition is of paramount impor-tance in the current context and it is therefore not surprising that refiners are looking at options to upgrade their product slates by optimal utilization of their existing assets. To survive in this competitive market refiners can also look at all possibilities of value addi-tions to such streams. Few examples of such streams are presented in Table-1. Some examples of value addition to re-finery streams are presented below:

Light naphtha cannot be blended in to the gasoline pool due to its low octane and high RVP values. This naphtha stream can be converted in to LPG and aromatic rich stream by using innova-tive technologies. One such technol-ogy is NTGG process which is jointly developed by IIP and GAIL. Figure 2

shows the NTGG unit of GAIL Vagho-dia, Gujrat. The typical product yields are 40% LPG and 45 % superior quality gasoline blend stock with sulphur con-tent less than 75 ppm and RON about 95.

Another stream for which disposal is a major problem is LCO from FCC. Ow-ing to its high aromatics content its ce-tane number is low whereas PAH and sulphur content are high. Upgradation of LCO by hydrotreating is a cost in-tensive option due to requirement of high hydrogen pressure as well as high hydrogen consumption. Recent studies carried out at IIP indicated that use of aromatics extraction process to remove these aromatics is better option. In this scheme either neat LCO or LCO mixed with the SR gas oil is treated with selec-

tive solvents like sulpholane or NMP, The solvent being polar selectively extract aromatics without compromis-ing much on yield. An improvement in about 20 cetane units is observed with about 66% sulphur reduction. The aro-matics extract obtained as a by product is a valuable feedstock for the produc-tion of 2, 6 Dimethyl naphthalene.

Recently IIP-EIL-HPCL have dem-onstrated on HPCL lube extraction unit, successful valorization of CLO into low aromatic raffinate for recycle as FCC feedstock and high Bureau of Mines Correlation Index (BMCI) ex-tract for making Carbon Black Feed Stock (CBFS) at HPCL lube extraction unit (Figure-3).

To process off spec naphtha, one in-

Figure 1: Global Energy Scenario

Refinery Stream Petrochemicals Alternative Use for Refinery Stream

FCC Offgas Ethylene Fuel Gas

FCC Olefins Propylene, Butylenes Alkylation/ Polygasoline

Reformate Benzene, Toluene, Xylenes Petrochemi-cal Derivatives

Gasoline Blending

Naphtha Olefins Gasoline, BTX

Gas Oil Olefins Diesel, Jet Kerosene, Heating Fuel

LPG Olefins Heating Fuel

FCC Ethylene Ethyl Benzene Fuel Gas

FCC Propylene Cumene, Isopropanol Oligomers Alkylation / Polygasoline

FCC Butylenes Methyl Ethyl Ketone, MTBE Xylenes Alkylation / Polygasoline

Kerosene n-Paraffins Refinery Product

FCC LCO Napthalene Diesel blend stock

Coker Kero C10 – C22 α olefins Refinery Product

Table 1: Maximizing value addition to refinery stream

Figure 2: NTGG unit of GAIL Vaghodia, Gujrat


novative approach is to extract pure aromatics and use raffinate as naphtha cracker feedstock. Although aromatic extraction technology exist for aromatic rich feedstocks with aromatic content more than 65% and naphthene content less than 2% such as reformate and hydrogenated pyrolysis gasoline(PG) whereas in case of off spec naphtha, the aromatic content is around 10-15%, and the naphthene content is more than 25%. The ratio of aromatics to naphthenes (impurities) is 15 to 20, in the conventional feedstock such as re-formate while In the naphtha cracker feedstock this ratio is less than 1. This makes the process to produce pure BTX from the said off spec naphtha highly challenging and needs innovations. In-novative process was developed at IIP to tackle these challenges (Figure-4). In the proposed process, naphtha feed before going to cracker will be routed to extraction column wherein it will be contacted with polar selective solvent to extract pure aromatics. The raffinate (dearomatized naphtha) produced will now send to cracker as an improved feedstock due to its low ( <3 wt.%) aromatic content. The recovery of pure aromatics from the extract phase can be carried out in the existing pyrolysis gasoline extraction unit as most of the naphtha crackers are already have their own dedicated aromatic extraction unit. The envisaged benefits of the technol-ogy are as follows:

• Feasibility of processing off grade naphtha with simultaneous produc-tion of pure aromatics.

• Increase in the capacity of existing naphtha cracker due to reduction of refractory aromatic compounds

• Decreased coke lay down in the fur-nace

Use of alternative technologies for desulphurization and dearomatisation

To meet an ever increasing demand of hydrogen in today’s refinery, effective

management of expensive hydrogen re-sources is essential Table-2. One option to reduce hydrogen consumption in the refinery is to supplement the existing hydrotreating technologies with alter-native technologies. The drawback with the hydroprocessing technologies are that they are cost intensive as well as operating cost is also high particularly for meeting stringent specifications with respect to sulphur and aromatics. More-

over considering increasing awareness for green house gases emissions, hy-drogen production from hydrocarbon sources needs critical evaluation. The reason being about 8 to 15 tons of CO2 is generated per ton of hydrogen. In view of this, worldwide research is go-ing on for development of technologies which use alternative routes e.g. Ad-sorption, oxidative desulphurisation, bio-desulphurisation etc.

IIP has recently developed technology for oxidative desulphurisation of die-sel and demonstrated in the lab scale production of Ultra Low Sulphur Die-sel having sulphur content less than 50 ppm. The conceptual flow scheme of this process is presented in Figure-5.

A novel vapor phase adsorptive de-sulphrization process has also been developed for sulphur removal from gasoline and diesel in the collaboration with SINTEF, Norway High through-put combinotarial screening technique (Figure 5) was used for the screening of adsorbents and selection of the novel sulphur selective adsorbent. The adsor-bents were also screened out and test-ed at Pressure Swing Adsorption Unit

Figure 3: Upgradation of CLO

Figure 4: Value addition to off spec naphtha

Basic: Capacity 8MMTPA

Parameter Hydroskimming Conven. Conversion Deep Conversion

Investment Billion US$ 0.5 1-1.5 2.5

Refining Cost, $/bbl 1.5 3-4 7.5

Fuel Conc. Wt% crude 4-4.5 6-8 11-13

H2 conc. Wt % crude 0.2-0.3 0.5-1 1-1.5

Table 2: Influence of refining complexity on hydrogen consumption


(Figure 6) for optimization of process conditions. This technology has many salient features such as minimum oc-tane loss for gasoline, sulphur can be removed to less than 30 ppm, hydrogen requirement is 6 times lower than the conventional hydrodesulphurization process, significant lower operating pressure, unique feature of seamless process integration with existing hy-

drodesulphurization facilities etc

The efforts for technology development for fuel oil desulphurization using the non hydrodesulphurization route are under progress. The technology would be based on unconventional energy (Microwave, ultrasound) assisted oxi-dation followed by solvent extraction process.

Biodesulphurization (BDS) is often considered as a potential alternative to the conventional deep HDS processes used in refineries. In this process, sul-phur specific bacteria remove sulphur from from petroleum fractions without degrading the carbon skeleton of the or-ganosulfur compounds. During a BDS process, alkylated dibenzothiophenes (Cx-DBTs) are converted to non-sulfur compounds, 2-hydroxybiphenyl (2-HBP), and sulphate by the bacteria using an oxidative ‘4-S’ biochemical pathway. BDS offers mild processing conditions and reduces the need for hydrogen. Both these features would lead to high energy savings in the refinery. Further, signifi-cant reductions in greenhouse gas emis-sions have also been predicted through BDS process. One such bacterial strain, Rhodococcus sp. IIPS7 (IIP), isolated by indigenously, showed 50% reduction of sulphur level of HDS diesel targeting mostly the alkylated dibenzothiophenic compounds. A consortium of such types of bacteria when treated with high sul-phur crude oil, showed significant re-moval of wide spectrum of sulphur compounds within 5 days. Improvement of bacterial consortium is under prog-ress for the development of effective and stable biodesulphurization process for high sulphur and viscous crude oil.

For small refineries use of hydropro-cessing for dearomatization of middle distillates (Heavy Naphtha, Kerosene and Gas Oil) is not attractive due to high capital investment & operating expense and loss of valuable aromat-ics. Solvent extraction can provide the alternative routes for dearomatization. However, conventional solvent extrac-tion using single solvent is not feasible due to boiling point overlap between solvent and three middle distillates of different boiling range. Re-extraction process using NMP solvent has been developed at IIP for dearomatization of heavy naphtha, kerosene and gas oil us-ing blocked out mode operation (Figure 7A & 7B).

Synergistic processing of biodiesel and bio-jet fuel

Renewables are going to make up an increasing share of the future fuels pool. First generation biofuels, mostly bioethanol and fatty acid methyl esters (FAME) from ‘food’ crops, though raw

Figure-5: Process flow scheme for oxidative desulphurization

Figure-6: Adsorptive desulphurization of Gasoline/Diesel

Figure 7A: Flow scheme of re-extraction process for dearomatization of middle distillates


material limited, were an important first step to creating a biofuels infrastructure. Second generation feedstocks, from ‘non-food’ sources, cellulosic waste, algal oils, and inedible-oils have the po-tential to make significant contributions. Refiners are well positioned to play a major role in the production of biofu-els. It is necessary to identify and utilize processing, composition, and infrastruc-ture synergies to leverage existing refin-ing/ transportation infrastructure to low-er capital costs, minimize value chain disruptions, and reduce investment risk. Processing of bio-diesel in refineries can also be rational approach as the refinery infrastructure can be used for the trans-esterification/ hydrotreating process and the bio-diesel thus produced can be blended with the petroleum diesel to produce high quality diesel. The advan-tages of blending in the refinery are use of existing infrastructure and eliminat-ing the possibilities of adulteration.

Majority of commercial processes cur-rently used to produce biodiesel employ base and acid catalysed transesterifica-tion of vegetables and fats. Both base and acid catalysts are associated with several inherent problems. Free fatty acid (FFA) present in the vegetable oil / fat and moisture interfere with trans-esterification, deactivate the catalyst leading to loss of catalyst and biodiesel yield. FFA reacts with base catalyst to form soaps which leads to emulsions and foam. Due to emulsion the purifi-cation and separation of glycerin and biodiesel becomes difficult. IIP has de-veloped heterogeneous catalyst based continuous process for biodiesel which is free from these difficulties. Main Features of the process are followings.

• Flexibility for processing variety of vegetable oils separately or mixed. Tolerance of higher levels of free fatty acids. Requires no pretreat-

ment or removal of FFA.• Conversion of free fatty acids pres-

ent in feed oils to biodiesel • Tolerance of water in alcohol • No emulsion or soap formation • Catalyst is recycled when operated

in batch mode and is not deactivated either with water or FFA.

• Biodiesel produced meets the stan-dard specification (ASTM, Europe-an or proposed BIS).

• Glycerin produced is ~ 95% pure• Process can be adapted to wide

range of production capacities. • The process is ecofriendly with al-

most zero effluents.IIP Dehradun has made a breakthrough by developing a catalyst and single step process for the production of biojet fuel from plant oil sources (Figure 8). The biojet fuel produced is a drop-in fuel and meeting most of the specification. The process can be well implemented in the current refinery infrastructure (hy-drocracker unit) without changing any modification. Moreover the byproducts of the CSIR-IIP process are green gas-oline, green diesel and this makes the process further more marketable.

In this process the catalyst is tailor made and the process conditions are so tuned that plant-oil triglycerides are hydrodeoxygenated, selectively hydro-cracked and hydroisomerized to get the desired range of the products.

Catalyst life study by continuous plant operation is going on at CSIR-IIP. The catalyst can be regenerated and resul-fided for reuse which makes the pro-cess more viable. Bulk production of the biojet fuel on existing pilot-plant is going on smoothly for real time engine testing, 15 liters of biojet has already been supplied in two batches to IOCL and HPCL for further testing.

Waste to wealth

Plastics have inherent advantages over competing materials like paper, glass, tin etc. and hence have been able to displace them from common use The world wide consumption of plastics is in excess of 300 MMT and is increas-ing at a rate of 10-12 % annually con-suming about ~ 5-7% of fossil fuels for its production and processing. Poly-olefinic plastics like polyethylene and polypropylene account for 65-70 % of

Figure 7B: De-aromatization of middle distillates in block out mode

Figure 8: Conversion of inedible oil to bio-jet fuel


the total. Their increased consumption has also resulted in simultaneous gen-eration of enormous amount of wastes. These wastes are obtained mainly from process industry, production industry and municipal solid wastes (MSW). Around 9-10 % of the (MSW) consists of plastic materials and it is estimated that in India more than 10 thousands tones per day of plastic wastes are gen-erated as part of MSW.

These plastics wastes being non-bio-degradable are environmental hazards and pose a serious disposal problem. The present means of waste plastics disposal like mechanical recycling, landfilling, incineration etc have cer-tain limitations and hence are not suit-able for disposal of the this increasing amount of waste. Chemical recycling of waste plastics ie the conversion of waste plastics to value added products in an environment friendly way has the potential to be a feasible solution for the utilization of waste plastics.

Since last decade intensive R & D ef-forts have been undertaken worldwide to develop an economically viable and environmentally friendly process for chemical recycling. Most of the pro-cesses developed worldwide up to now produce a type of plastic crude which requires further processing in refiner-ies and blending with refinery streams and hence have not found wide accept-ability. IIP has developed a technology to converts the waste plastic in to fuels (Euro-III diesel and gasoline) and aro-matic depending upon the requirement (Figure 9). The salient features of the

technology are listed below:

• Exclusive production of either gaso-line or diesel or aromatics alongwith LPG

• Liquid fuel (gasoline and diesel) meeting standard fuel specifications (Euro III)

• Environment friendly process• Scalable in batch and continuous

mode• All polyolefinic wastes, accounting

for 65-70 % of total plastic wastes, can be used

• 5 TPD demo plant is being set up

Used lube oil disposal problem can be tackle by its re-refining for its reuse. IIP, Dehradun has developed NMP based technology which is offered to United Lube Oil Company (UNILUBE) Jubail

Industrial City, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to improve the color and color stability of used lube oil. In this process solvent ex-traction of used wide cut oil followed by its fractionation into light, medium and heavy base oils (LBO, MBO and HBO) showed improvement in color as well as stability in color for a period extending upto 6 months (Figure-10)

CO2 capture and utilization

Petroleum refining is an energy inten-sive process, and consequently contrib-utes significantly to green house gases emissions. With the world refining capacity exceeding 85 million barrels per day (12.88 million tons/day), CO2 emitting out from a refinery is approx. 5.0 million tons /day (i.e. almost 0.25 to 0.5 tons CO2 / ton of crude to be refined). Strict environmental regula-tions, increasing effects of green house gases and growing concerns of global warming have generated a strong need to estimate and reduce CO2 emissions.

A simple method to estimate CO2 emis-sions from different units of refinery- crude distillation, FCC, reformers, cokers etc. has been developed by IIP. These correlations were incorporated into a commercial petroleum planning software (ProPlan) to estimate total CO2 emissions from a typical refinery configuration (Table-3). Such a tool can be extremely valuable to target reduc-tions of CO2 emissions in day to day operations as well as design future re-finery configurations, while meeting the

Figure 9: Waste plastic to fuels and chemicals

Figure-10: Re-refining of used lube oil


yield and quantity of refined products.

A novel technology based on zeolite type adsorbent has been developmented for CO2 recovery from Power plant flue gas in the collaboration NEERI, Nagpur, CSMCRI, Bhavnagar, and IIT, Mumbai. This technology provides CO2 purities more than 90% with recoveries > 80%. Based on this technology, 100Kg/hr Pi-lot plant is coming up at NTPC.

Metal organic frameworks (MOF) which have high adsorption CO2 capac-ity are being tested in the collaboration of SINTEF, Norway for PSA/VSA tech-nology development for CO2 recovery from flue gas. Moreover, CO2 removal form Bio gas to improve its calorific value using the zeolite based adsorbents is also under progress in the collabora-tion with Monash University Australia.

A hindered amine based novel solvent (AGSL 69Abs) to be used in absorp-tion processes for CO2 capture from the flue gas has been developed by screen-ing and equililbrium measurements of more than 90 solvents/ blended solvents formulations. This solvent offers highly improved characteristics compared to the conventional MEA solvents. Higher rate of absorption, easy regeneration and high absorption capacity for this solvent are bound to decrease the investment and operating cost of the process for CO2 recovery

Energy Conservation and Processes Improvement

The key to maximizing energy effi-ciency is to capture and reuse waste

heat within the processes and total sites, cutting the need for additional heating and cooling, thereby savings in hot and cold utilities. Pinch Analysis is a sys-tematic procedure, based on fundamen-tal thermodynamic principles (first and second law of thermodynamics), that guarantees optimum solution for en-ergy conservation. Prime objectives of pinch analysis are to achieve financial saving and green environment by better process heat integration (Maximizing process- to- process heat recovery and reducing the external utility load).

In pinch analysis area, IIP has got im-mense expertise and has already car-ried out a large number of projects in this area. Out of those, a list of major projects along with benefits achieved is given below.

Human resource development

Developing human resource for hydro-

carbon and related industries has been one of the major activities of IIP since its establishment and has maintained its leading role in imparting training to personnel from petroleum refining, pet-rochemical and related industries and government bodies. IIP has already im-parted training to more than 7000 per-sonnel since its inception. During the last fourteen years, IIP has organized more than 200 training programs.

Conclusions

The Indian refining industry is currently faced with several challenges. These challenges are both with respect to main-taining production margins as well as to address both environmental issues and stringent quality product specifications. Coupled with this is the challenge to adopt alternative fuels. There are several opportunities with the refiners to exploit in short term, medium term and long term basis. Understanding the refinery processes, value addition with various components can bring the use of new and innovative technologies that would help the refiners to survive in the future. The successful would be those who an-ticipate the changes and work towards implementing the schemes to meet such changes, particularly with respect to the need to reduce green house gas emissions and thus large scale introduction of alter-native fuels from renewable resources.IIP has already developed and committed to maintain its leading role in developing large number of innovative technology to meet the challenges prevailing in hydro-carbon Industry.

Projects Benefits achieved

Crude Distillation Unit's preheat train, IOCL, Gu-wahati

For same hot utility consumption CDU's throughput could be increased from 1 MMTPA to 1.3 MMTPA

Delayed Coker Unit's preheat train, IOCL, Guwahati 4715 MMkcal energy savings per annum

Crude Distillation Unit's preheat train , Reliance Jamnagar

For same hot utility consumption CDU's throughput could be increased by 30M3/hr

Lube Extraction Unit, HPCL, Mumbai Hydrodynamic debottlenecking of Solvent Recovery Circuit (SRC) furnace for proposed unit capacity of 48M3/hr from 36 M3/hr

FCC Unit at IOC Panipat Refinery Furnace duty saved by 1.26 MMKcal/hr

Design of heat exchanger network for the solvent recovery section of dewaxing unit, NRL

Furnace of 4.0 MMkcal/hr was replaced by MP steam heater

Crude Distillation & Delayed Coker Units, IOCL, Digboi Refinery

Crude preheat was increased by 10 αC

List of major pinch analysis projects

Table 3: Utility requirement and CO2 emission from a typical refineryBlock Fuel HPSteam LPSteam Power H2 CO2

KJ Kg/d Kg/d kwh Kg/d T/d

CDUNHTVDUCokerGOHTDeisel HTKera HTFCCReformerNHT-1IsomerizationLPG UnitSulfer Rec

1.48E+103.34E+091.48E+101.31E+101.68E+101.53E+091.46E+09

9.07E+092.64E+094.77E+09

5483024

1350789118978

1350789

83298446357.643953.5

101379

22000073830.622000037206.659581.6

2718125681.519619533308.466690.92261.6

10769.324820.8

20547.9

1999436123.555715.31

106096.217917.12948.38

1803.302348.28371803.302472.20491870.781155.9292148.8262

1072.1541205.9079278.989425.765

2205.869287.94046

Total 8.23E+10 5483024 3865231 198892.0 147101 8360.069


Dr M.O. Garg is Director of Indian Institute of Petroleum, Dehradun, a constituent laboratory of Council of Scientific & Industrial Research. Dr Garg has 33 years of experience in the refining industry. He started his career after graduating from IIT-Kanpur in the Research & Development Division of Engineers India Ltd in 1976. He did his Ph.D. at University of Melbourne in the area of Solvent Extraction. In 1994 he joined Process System Services Division of KTI-Technip India Ltd. and joined Indian Institute of Petroleum in 1998.Dr Garg has developed and commercialized several technologies and has received two CSIR Technology Awards as well as a CSIR Shield for his commercialization efforts. He has contributed immensely to the growth of Indian refining industry in various ways. He has published over 213 papers and has 26 patents to his credit.He has been elected Fellow of Indian National Academy of Engineering.

Dr Garg specializes in the area of liquid-liquid extraction, simulation and modelling, process integration, advance control, and process conceptual-ization. He is acknowledged as an expert in petroleum refining, petrochemicals and has been invited both in India and abroad to give lectures in prestigious conferences.Dr Garg also held the additional charge as Director, Central Building Research Institute at Roorkee from 23rd July 2008 to 5th August, 2009.

Dr M O Garg

As we ring in the new year 2012, many people would make many resolutions. Loose weight, quit smoking, start morning walk, go to gym, get more exercise, be punctual, spend more time with kids and family- any number of things to improve quality of life at home and office. Personal resolutions are fine, but as always considered that if we want to be successful at - both places, the home and at the office then we must main-tain same set of values and standards of personal behavior at both places. So it's very important to make business resolutions, the same way we make personal resolutions.

Here are five things we may resolve to stop doing in 2012:

1. Chiming in on office gossip It can be addictive and interesting to

talk about the other person - peer, col-league, or boss. But the best business leaders never participate in office gossip. It chips away at ones personal integrity. How do you keep your lip closed, and not tempted to add more spice, while others are talking about someone? Just envision that the person is in the room, listening to every word. Your behavior will change for the better, and people will begin to see you as a leader with integrity.

2. Upgrading your own equipment, gadgets, softwares, etc first

The boss always gets the newest and best equipment, right? The rest trick-les down to the junior employees. Yet, these are the very employees who man the front lines. It doesn’t make sense to give the newest, best machine gun to the 5-star general. Instead, you give it to the infantry. So, authorize the

best business equipment for those on the front lines, and give yourself what trickles down.

3. Doing anything that’s had not worked or not working

This may sound obvious, but year af-ter year I see entrepreneurs continue to invest time and money in things that didn’t work during the prior year. Maybe the service you offered wasn’t taking off, or the advertising hasn’t brought in clients. Whatever “it” is that has not been working, stop doing it in 2012. Instead, focus on what is work-ing, and do more of that.

If you feel, so strongly to make non working things then start spending more time with non- performers and turn them into performers.

4. Playing into other people’s expecta-tions or imitating others

Did you put that suit on because you re-ally wanted to, or because it’s expected of you? Is your voicemail message really you or is it the generic, “Sorry I can’t get to the phone right now, but please leave a message and I’ll call you back as soon as I can”? Are you doing what you do because it’s what others expect or be-cause it is the real you? If you want to have the best 2012 possible, be your-self. Let your business be an extension of who you really are. You’ll be more satisfied in your business than ever before, and you’ll probably make more money as a result (a nice side effect).

5. Falling prey to I know all syndrome.Many of us, once sit on high chairs, fall prey

to this syndrome, which is born out of the notion is that knowledge is experience or vic-e-versa. In this fast changing world, knowledge is ever-expanding in every domain, and one has to spend extra time and effort to update him/ herself with the ever-growing domain of knowledge. We may learn from any ones experience but like real experience the knowledge has to be gained by self. It will also help your col-leagues to open up and become more in-novative and creative, which will help boost every ones morale and your own career.

Only if we remember that the self life of knowledge is only two years, then we shall come out of that syndrome, listen to oth-ers and make little extra effort this year to update knowledge, and to start with sub-scribing to a professional journal and buy and read one book every month.

So, start introspecting and planning your business resolutions, which may add more to then above list. Determine what you can do to make your business more successful and your career more in the new year, and make a list of what you’ll stop doing. But, by our own experience, we know that only making resolution may not be of much success. Write it down, share with one of your close confi-dantes ( may be your wife), execute it on proj-ect mode,and review progress every month.

We can always improve our office, atmo-sphere and attitude. Focus on those is-sues, and your business and your career will thrive in the new year.

Best wishes for a great year ahead,

Anand Kumar

New Year Resolution - 2012


Change in the quality of feed stocks processed by refiners over the last decade has led to sig-nificant changes in refinery operations. Avail-ability of sweet crude is scarce and expensive;

it prompted refiners to look for inexpensive sour crude to improve the refinery margins. Inexpensive feed stocks are heavier, rich in aromatics, and contain high level of sulphur, nitrogen, and metals. Further, VGO feed which is processed in FCC also contains high levels of sulphur, nitrogen and metals etc and these also cause higher emis-sions like SOx, NOx and carbon monoxide in to the envi-ronment. The contaminant metals viz, Nickel, Vanadium and Iron deposit on the FCC catalyst and cause metal deactivation and also promote unwanted side reactions dehydrogenation and hydrogenation. Heavier feeds also contain higher concentrations of nitrogen and sulphur. Basic nitrogen compounds are severe poison for acidic catalyst which neutralizes the acid sites and deactivates the catalyst; it also causes excess NOx emissions. High sulphur ends up in distillate products as well as in regen-erator as SOx emission. Environmental protection agen-cies (EPA) are forcing stringent regulations on product specifications like gasoline sulphur and regenerator gas emissions with respect to NOx, SOx and CO. Refiners are also need to meet time to time market demands like LPG, propylene, gasoline etc. Always base catalyst alone can’t meet all FCC product demands, so often refiners go for catalyst additives which are targeted to achieve specific demands of FCC operation. In the present communication authors tried to give clear picture of different additives used in FCC to meet the product demand as well as con-trolling the environmental emissions. Authors also ana-lyzed the current Indian refinery scenario and the usage of FCC catalyst additives in future.

Fluid Catalytic Cracking (FCC)

FCC is major secondary conversion process which converts heavier hydrocarbon molecules to lighter distillates. (Sche-matic flow diagram of unit is shown in Figure.1). In FCC, hot vacuum gas oil liquid is contacted with solid particles of composite catalyst at high temperatures in a fluid bed reactor. The catalyst which is based on USY zeolite (structure shown in Figure.2) should be in adequate quantity and temperature to vaporize the feed, raise the oil feed to a cracking temperature of about 480°C to 590°C and supply the endothermic heat of reaction. During the conversion of the heavy petroleum frac-tion to lighter fractions, by product coke is deposited on the catalyst particles thereby deactivating the catalyst, coked cata-lyst is separated from the cracked petroleum product. Coked or deactivated catalyst is transported to regenerator. In the re-generator, coke is burned in presence of air and catalyst is re-generated. The hot regenerated catalyst is then returned to ris-er reactor for further cracking of fresh VGO and completing

Role of Catalyst additives in Fluid Catalytic Cracker PerformanceChiranjeevi T, Gokak D T, Viswanathan P SCorporate R &D Centre, Bharat petroleum Corporation Ltd.

Figure1: Schematic Fluid Catalytic Cracking unit

Catalyst & Additive

the cycle. FCC process is heat balanced. Burning of coke in the regenerator pro-vides sufficient heat, to persuade all of the heat requirements of the systems in addition to external heating. There is a firm liaison between the amount of coke produced during cracking, coke burned off during regeneration and the hot cata-lyst returns to the cracking side of the process. This combination is not totally independent and controllable because it is in turn partly influenced by the nature of the petroleum fraction to make more or less coke under a given set of crack-ing conditions. FCC catalyst is vital in entire process for obtaining the reaction products in addition to process param-eters. Numerous catalyst formulations are available in the market and refiner has to select best formulation depend-ing upon the configuration of individual unit and individual unit product require-ments. In the changed refining scenario for the processing of tougher feeds, cat-alyst not alone justify all requirements of FCC unit, so there is a need to add a separate catalytic material which works in combination with base FCC catalyst.

FCC Additives

FCC additives are specialty catalysts designed to achieve certain objectives like gasoline quality improvement, in-creasing RON, increasing conversions, improved conversions, reduced flue gas emissions etc, without any modifi-cation in the plant hardware in a short period of time. The use of additives

range from 0.1-40 wt % of base cata-lyst and depends upon the specific ap-plication. The physico-chemical prop-erties of these additives closely match with the base catalyst. The most com-monly used FCC additives are ZSM-5 for LPG maximization, gasoline sulfur reduction additive, SOx/NOx reduc-tion additives, and CO combustion promoter additives for controlling the emissions and metal passivator and bottoms cracking additives for RFCC applications. In the following sections different FCC additives functions, chemistry and developments over a pe-riod time were discussed.

ZSM-5 AdditivesZSM-5 belongs to pentasil zeolite fam-ily discovered by Mobil scientists and primarily used for octane boosting or LPG maximization in FCC. It is a stable zeolite with alumina content be-low 10% and pores in the range of 5.5 Ǻ diameter. It has distinctly different pore structure and pore arrangement than Y zeolite. Due to shape selectivity, only long chain, low octane gasoline range normal paraffin molecules enter its pores and undergo rapid cracking (Fig.3, Majon R. J., Spielman 1990).

Due to its high Si/Al (>20) ratio, use of ZSM-5 results in higher olefins yield with lower hydrogen transfer activity. ZSM additives usage is dated back in 1980’s and initially it was added as integral part of main FCC catalyst but found ineffective because of proximity of ZSM-5 and USY zeolites hydrogen transfer reactions were promoted ulti-mately loss of olefins.

Now a day’s refiner’s main objective is maximization of propylene because of demand in polymer industry. During ZSM-5 introduction day’s additive us-age is limited to 1-2 wt % due to the fear of dilution effect, now the addition rates were increased to more than 10% depending upon the objective.

Gasoline Sulfur Reduction AdditivesFluid catalytic cracking unit contributes over 40% to the refinery gasoline pool. FCC gasoline contains sulfur compounds like mercaptans, sulphides, disulphides, thiophenes, and benzothiophenes ac-counting for most of the gasoline sulfur. These compounds are formed in the riser either by cracking of heavier sulfur com-pounds or by recombination of H2S with olefins. Typically 2-10% of FCC feed sulphur ends up in gasoline.

Thiophenic compounds are major constituent of gasoline but benzothio-phenes which present in higher boiling range and these are difficult to crack. It is generally believed that thiophene conversion requires hydrogenation by hydrogen transfer (HT) from H-donor molecules before cracking (Scheme-1).

Scheme-1

Gasoline sulfur reduction mechanism is not fully understood till date. However it is believed that the reduction follows cracking of sulfur species formed in the process to release H2S, or inhibition of formation of sulfur compounds. The

Figure 2: FCC Catalyst Constituents

Figure 3: Shape selectivity of ZSM-5


dosage of additive varies from 10 to 40 wt % of the total FCC catalyst inventory based on the feed and product sulfur targets. Laboratory micro activity tests (MAT) or pilot plant tests have shown that these additives could decrease the sulfur content of FCC gasoline by as much as 40% without significantly af-fecting other yields, excepting a slight increase of coke and hydrogen produc-tion. But in some reports (http;//Interca-tinc.com ) it was reported that GSR ad-ditive addition do causes change in yield pattern. In one Indian refinery process-ing 1.3 wt% sulfur feed achieved 34% gasoline S-reduction with addition of 15 wt% GSR additive (Bharatan, 2008).

Bottoms Cracking AdditivesBottoms cracking additives are mainly used for processing the heavier feed in FCC. As discussed in other sections, heavier feeds contain more metal con-tamination, high nitrogen and sulfur when compared to normal FCC feeds. In normal course of operation FCC catalyst gets deactivated easily with the excess metals and high basic nitrogen feeds. Bottoms cracking additives are used to remove the metals and other poison ef-fects and helping the base catalyst to per-form its normal cracking function with out any problem. Bottoms cracking addi-tives mainly contains large pore non crys-talline, non zeolitic active alumina matrix materials which pre crack the heavier molecules and saves valuable zeolite form metal contamination. These addi-tives are more coke and gas selective.

SOx Reduction AdditivesThe source of SOx (mix of SO2 and SO3) emission from FCC is the sulfur present on the coke which was depos-ited on catalyst during reaction. SOx emissions are hazardous due to the formation of acidic compounds in the environment. Typically 10-30 wt% of sulfur in feed contributes to sulphur Oxides. SOx reduction additives are more effective at adsorbing SO3 than SO2 under regenerator conditions. SOx reduction additive contains mainly two components one is oxidizing agent which promotes SO2 oxidation to SO3 and the other one is sulfur pick up agent. The main reactions of the pro-cess are represented in Fig.4. Base catalyst or catalysts with high alumina can play a role of sulfur pick up agent for SO3 as shown below.

Al2O3 + 3 SO3 → Al2 (SO4)3

Presence of excess oxygen or CO com-bustion promoter additive also oxidizes SO2 to SO3 and thus reducing the load on SOx additive. Magnesium is ac-tive metal in both the additives. One is based on spinel MgAl2O4 crystal structure with cubic close packed ar-ray of oxides and the other one is based on hydrotalcite {Mg6 Al2 (OH)18 45 H2O} which is also having layered structure with easy access for SOx spe-cies. Efficiency of SOx removal var-ies from unit to unit and also type of additive being used. While processing 1.1wt% sulphur feed with a through put of 3125 TPD, approximately 11.5 MT of SOx per a day is emitted. By the addition of 10 wt% SOx additive a re-duction of about 60 wt% SOx level is observed (Baruah 2007).

Metal PassivationDuring cracking process, catalyst gets deactivated due to the deposition of

metals such as Ni, V, Fe. Nickel pro-motes dehydrogenation reactions which results in higher dry gas and coke make. Vanadium is harmful to the catalyst be-cause in presence of steam it forms va-nadic acid, which can destroy the zeolite by hydrolysis of its frame work.

V2O5 + 3 H2O → 2H3VO4

Loss in MAT activity with vanadium content on the catalyst is presented in the Fig.5. Deleterious effects of metal can be countered to some extent by increasing the catalyst addition rates. However use of a metal trap is a better approach when feed metal concentra-tion is high. Different metal oxides or mixed oxides like (Al2O3, TiO2, Ba-TiO3, Ca ZrO3, and SnO2) and natural clays have been used as metal traps. Metal traps are used in two ways. One is to use as integral part of FCC cata-lyst or add as separate additives as and when required. Antimony or Bismuth based additives are generally used as

Figure 4: SOx reduction Chemistry

Figure 5: Variation in MAT activity with Vanadium content


Nickel passivators.

Antimony based additives are typically liquid additives and its general formula is represented as above where in R is hydrocarbyl radical containing from 1 to about 18 carbon atoms. The over all number of carbon atoms per molecule being in the range of 6 to about 90 and the Ni is passivated by forming a nickel antimony alloy ( Su Shuquin, 2004 and Dwayne,1995). Addition of antimony solution depends on the concentration of nickel on FCC equilibrium catalyst. Antimony to nickel ratio of 0.3 to 0.5 considered to be optimum for effective nickel passivation (Reza 1995).

CO Combustion Promoter AdditivesIn FCC regenerator the following coke burning reactions occur.

1) C + O2 → CO2 (1)

2) 2 C + O2 → 2 CO (2)

Both are exothermic and take place si-multaneously in dense and dilute phase of regenerator. Reaction 2 proceeds in dilute phase causing increase of temper-ature in CO boiler or stack and is gener-ally referred as “after burn”. To control this CO combustion catalyst additive is added in small quantity in regenerator. CO combustion catalyst additive con-tains noble metal dispersed on a porous support. Typical addition rate of CO promoter is in the range of 0.2-1 wt% of the base catalyst or 1 ppm of noble metal on over all catalyst inventories. Addition rates may vary depending upon carbon content on spent catalyst. Occasionally, the active metal is also in-corporated along with the base catalyst. Catalyst suppliers have come up with multifunctional non noble metal addi-tives which reduce both Carbon monox-ide and Nitrogen oxides (NOx). Usage of CO combustion promoter additives started way back in 1970’s. Initially CO promoter active component is used as an integral part of FCC catalyst but found some problems later it was added as separate particle and found more ef-fective in optimizing the performance.

Now a day’s world wide more than 80% of Fluid catalytic crackers use CO pro-moter combustion technology for effec-tive control of after burn as well as bet-ter heat balance in FCC.

NOx Reduction AdditivesFCC alone contributes 50% of total NOx emitted in the refinery (Lliopou-lou 2005). Partial burn FCC regenera-tor without CO combustion promoter additive typically does not emit more than 50 to 150 ppm NOx. But units which are operated in full burn mode may emit NOx as high as 500 ppm. As per Grace Davison studies 50% of ni-trogen in feed was found in the bottoms and LCO, 5% released as ammonia in riser reactor and the rest deposited as coke on the catalyst. Nitrogen depos-ited on coke mostly oxidized to mo-lecular N2. NOx as percentage of N2 in coke varied from 10 to 25 wt% (Grace Davison FCC guide, 1996).

With the addition rate of 1 to 2 wt% ad-ditive, NOx can be reduced by almost 70 wt%. Even though additive plays significant role in NOx reduction, FCC unit operating conditions greatly im-pact NOx. Typically, high oxygen en-vironment favours NOx formation. The Effect of oxygen concentration on NOx content is presented in the Fig.6. The addition of CO combustion promoters increases the NOx formation due to noble metal promoted oxidation. Simi-larly, the NOx additive performance is influenced by the presence of other gases such as SO2, SO3, CO, CO2 (Gu-dio, 2004). NOx is also reduced in the regenerator by reacting with coke

The typical reactions which help for NOx reduction are as follows.

2NO+CO → N2 + CO2 + ½ O2 2NO + C → N2 + CO2 NOx reduction additives contain noble metals dispersed on inorganic support. Metals used are Irridium and palladi-um. Irridium found to be more selec-tive because of its ability to adsorb NO dissociately in presence of excess O2. (Gudio 2004, Zhao 1997, Cheng 1998).

Future of FCC Catalyst additives

In the above sections we have dis-cussed about the chronological and quantum growth happened in individ-ual FCC additives area. It is clear that significant growth was noticed in each area in terms of technological develop-ments as well as consumption levels in FCC units across the world. FCC ad-ditives can broadly classified in to two categories

1. Additives which improves Activity and selectivity

2. Additives which are targeted to con-trol environmental emissions and product specifications.

In Future, the growth of these addi-tives mainly depends on environmental regulations on FCC emissions, product quality control, changing crude slate, and demand for new products like propylene. World wide demand for propylene is expected to grow by 5% per year. FCC is very good source for propylene, but base catalyst alone can’t meet the requirements of propylene.

Fig.6: Variation of NOx with respect to regenerator oxygen


So, consumption of ZSM-5 additive is expected to increase tremendously. Environmental specifications are be-coming more stringent and forced refiners to reduce the NOx, SOx, CO emissions. World wide these specifica-tions are varying but lower limits of 20 ppm of NOx and 25 ppm of SOx are expected to meet. To meet these strin-gent specifications refiners has to opt for environmental emission control ad-ditives. Now a day’s many FCC units use more than one additive and maxi-mum of four additives to meet different functionalities.

Michael et al (2005) in his article dis-cussed about current FCC additives demand and future demand (Table1 & 2). Currently ZSM-5 additive is hav-ing maximum share of 50% and SOx reduction additives occupying the sec-ond position with the share of 34%. GSR share is around 8% where as CO promoter demand is close to 3% and other additives like bottoms cracking, non platinum CO promoter and NOx additives together have 2.5% share. In future depending upon the need the additives usage may touch 50% of the catalyst inventory. Additives concen-

trations are optimized depending upon the economics, operational constraints and market demand.

Indian Scenario

In line with world trends Indian refin-ing industry also responding quickly to meet the new demands in terms of product quality and specific product maximization. Table.3 presents differ-ent additives usage in Indian refineries and source of those additives (FCC ac-tivity committee data).

The following are the some of the re-cent developments in Indian FCC units.

• More and more FCC’s being oper-ated in maximum diesel mode and options available are elimination of diesel boiling range material from FCCU feed, reducing conversion with low cat activity etc.

• In Panipat refinery ZSM additive was in use for LPG maximization.

• Octane booster additive and gasoline sulfur reduction additives from M/s intercat were tested in BPCL MR Unit and results are in expected lines.

• Indigenously developed additives

like CO combustion promoter ad-ditives, ZSM-5 additives are also in use in Indian refineries.

• In HPCL Vizag, automatic catalyst loaders were installed for GSR and DeSOx additives and achieved 60% reduction.

Indian refineries are also concentrat-ing on how to maximize propylene in existing FCC units or revamping the units to fulfil the objectives.

Summary

Fluid catalytic cracking is most impor-tant secondary catalyst conversion pro-cess and major contributor to refinery margin. Changing refinery economics forces refiner to process heavy and dirty crude’s which have high metals, sulfur and nitrogen. Processing VGO with high metals, sulfur and nitrogen is challenging task with out changing the product slate. High nitrogen and sulfur content causes excess emission of NOx and SOx in the regenerator. Also according to the mar-ket demand specific products like LPG, propylene and gasoline targets should be met. These problems in the unit can be tackled by changing the chemical prop-erties of the catalyst and adjusting the operating parameters but with in a limit. Additive usage, in addition to base FCC catalyst is very useful option to meet the FCC unit objectives with out going for major capital investments.

FCC additives can broadly classified in to two categories one is activity and selectivity improvers and other cat-egory is emission control additives. Among all additives, ZSM-5 additive is having maximum share of 50% and SOx reduction additives occupying the second position with the share of 34%. GSR share is around 8% where as CO promoter demand is close to 3% and other additives like bottoms cracking, non platinum CO promoter and NOx additives together have 2.5% share. Additives concentrations are optimized depending upon the economics, opera-tional constraints and market demand

FCC additives are becoming the future of FCC catalysis. Additives are be-coming the refiner choice to meet new environmental specifications and new product demand with out investing in capital cost. So, since last four decades considerable research has been done

FCC application %

LPG Enhancement 50

SOx reduction 34

Gasoline sulphur reduction additive 7.8

Pt based CO promoter 2.9

Bottoms cracking and V traps 1.5

Non-Pt based CO promoter 0.5

NOx additive 0.5

Table.1 FCC additives Demand

AdditivePortion of FCC inventory, %

Base Catalyst with USY structure~50

Performance enhancing additives Bottoms cracking/V trapsHigh Y zeolite ZSM-5

10-50

Environmental AdditivesSOx reductionNOx reductionGasoline sulfur reductionCO reduction additive

0-40

Amount of each additive is optimized depending upon the economics and operational constrains and market demand.

Table:2 Additives use in Next decade


P.S. Viswanathan is a Chief Man-ager and Head Corporate R&D Cen-tre, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd., at Greater Noida. He holds an MSc. degree and PhD in chemistry from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, India. Dr Viswanathan has over 30 years of research experience in pe-troleum refining, petrochemicals,

catalysis and polymers.

T Chiranjeevi

DK Gokak

T. Chiranjeevi is Deputy Manager at Corporate R&D Centre; Bharat Pe-troleum Corp. Ltd., at Greater Noida. His areas of interest include refinery catalysts and catalytic processes and Bio fuels. He holds a PhD from Indian Institute of Petroleum, Dehradun and an MSc degree in chemistry from Andhra University, Visakhapatnam. Dr.Chiranjeevi has over 15 years of research experience and has authored 36 journal and seminar research papers. He holds four patents.

PS Viswanathan

in this area and fast growth is already witnessed. Still must research is under way and additives are going take centre stage in future FCC operations.

Acknowledgements: Authors thank BPCL management for support and permission to publish this article.

References

1. Majon R. J., Spielman, J. "Increas-ing Gasoline Octane and Light Ole-fin Yields with ZSM-5," The Cata-lyst Report, 5 (1990). P45-57.

2. Baruah, B. J., Jagannadha Rao,

M., Bharathan, S., Varaprasad, P.N. “Sulphur dioxide emission reduc-tion by using DeSOx additive in FCC Units at HPCL –Visakh Re-finery “, XIV Refinery Technology Meet, 2007, Trivendrum, India,.

3. Bharatan, S. “Maximization of HS crude processing using FCC addi-tives” Environment and profitabil-ity challenges and opportunities in FCC, IOC and intercat joint FCC catalyst and additives seminar, Jan-uary, 2008, New Delhi.

4. Grace Davison guide to Fluid Cata-lytic Cracking Part I, II, III, (1993-1999).

5. Gudio, W A, “FCC additive demon-strations, part 2", Petroleum Tech-nology Quarterly, Q4 ( 2004), pp. 49-58.

6. Cheng, W. C., Kim, G., Peters, A.W., Zhao, X., Rajagopalan, K., Ziebarth, M.S., Pereira, C.J. ‘Environmental Fluid Catalytic cracking’, Catal. Rev. Sci. Eng., 40 (1998), P39.

7. Zhao, X., Peters, A.W., Weatherbee, G.W. “Nitrogen chemistry and NOx control in FCC regenerator”, Ind. Eng. Chem. Res. 36 (1997), P4535.

8. Lliopoulou E.A, Efthimiadis L, Na-lbandian B, Vasalos IA, Barth J.O, Lercher JA, “Ir-based additives for NO reduction and CO oxidation in the FCC regenerator: Evaluation, Characterization and mechanistic studies” Applied Catalysis B: 60 (2005), pp. 277–288.

9. Su Shuqin. “Additives used in cata-lytic cracking of hydrocarbons” US Patent 6723228, 2004.

10.Dwayne, R. S., Bartlesville, O. “Met-als passivation of cracking cata-lysts”, US patent 5389233, (1995).

11. Reza Sadeghbeigi, Fluid Catalytic Cracking Handbook, Design, Oper-ation, and Troubleshooting of FCC Facilities. Gulf Publishing Com-pany, Houston, Texas, (1995).

12.Machel K M, The future of FCC catalysts, Hydrocarbon engineer-ing, 10 (2005).

Refinery Additive/s Quantity, Kgs/D Vendor, M/s

CPCL Chennai ZSM-5 with 40% Crystalline COP

6% of fresh cat Addition

NA Grace

HPCL Mumbai ZSM-5 ~ 45 Kg NA

HPCL Vizag COPNP GSR additive ZSM-5 (45%Cryst)

NA Intercat Intercat Sud Chemie

BPCL Kochi ZSM-5 CO promoterGSR additive

2.6% of fresh cat addition5 Kg/DAdded earlier

IntercatIntercat Albemarle

IOC Panipat ZSM-5 2% of Fresh Cat NA

BPCL MR Propylene Max ZSMGSR additive

5% of fresh cat5%NA

IntercatAlbemarele

Table.3 Additives usage in India

D.T. Gokak is a Senior Manager at the Corporate R&D Centre Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd., at Greater Noida. He holds a PhD from University Of Baroda, India and MSc degree in chemistry from Karnatak University, Dharwad, India. He has vast experience in heterogeneous and homogeneous catalysis. At present, Dr. Gokak is working in the areas of refinery catalysts, additives and catalytic processes. He has over 30 years of research experience and has published 50 research papers both in journals and conferences. Dr. Gokak holds six patents.


Introduction

Biotechnology is emerging as a major field of study and has direct impact on all aspects of life including the petroleum industry. Although, currently, the impact of biotechnology is most noticeable in the health and pharmaceutical sectors, chemical industry and in environmental technologies, it has assumed an important role in the energy sector in recent times.

Biotechnology provides a solution in sustained way to con-serve energy resources and control the environmental deg-radation.

Bacteria have successfully colonized virtually every envi-ronment on earth because they can rapidly adapt to changing conditions, and use a large and varied number of nutrients to generate energy. However, until recently, the environments of many petroleum reservoirs were considered too hostile for bacterial growth due to low availability of water, at high temperature, pressure, and salinity (Orphan et al, 2000).

Petroleum reservoirs harbor a rich and diverse community of microorganisms including (i) fermentative, (ii) thiosulfate, and sulphate-reducing (SRB), and (iii) methanogenic bacte-ria (Salinas et al, 2004). Anaerobes have always been con-sidered as the dominant microorganisms of petroleum res-ervoirs. Among them, SRB group of bacteria constitute an important microbial community of the oil field environment.

Microbial Culture Products (MCPs) occupy an increasingly important and growing segment in oil field production op-

erations. They are a truly environmentally benign treatment technology that can be used to replace and augment many conventional technologies, including many oil field chemi-cals. The extraordinary diversity of microorganisms with the concomitant likelihood for many more such products in the future suggests that their role in oil field operations will con-tinue to expand and will supplant many conventional tech-nologies in the next 100 years (Bailey et al, 2001).

For over 2 decades, MCPs have been used for paraffin con-trol, production enhancement, well bore treatments as well as for scale and corrosion problems. Their use in bioreme-diation is also increasing.

Keeping in view the growing importance and application of biotechnology in oil field operations, Oil India Limited has been proactive in taking advantage of this emerging technol-ogy in field operations. In this paper, some of the applica-tions of biotechnology in OIL’s upstream activities and the results of studies carried out are discussed.

Microbial Paraffin Remediation

Paraffin deposition results in a variety of problems for oil field operators. These problems include clogging of tubular to occult formation deposition that reduces formation per-meability. Developments in application of biotechnology in paraffin remediation have today enabled us to use this tech-nology successfully.

Conventionally, thermal and chemical treatments have been used for controlling paraffin deposition. Both of these tech-

Microbial Biotechnology Applications In Petroleum Industry - OIL's ExperienceSrinivasan V Raju, M C Nihalani, B B Guha and Ibha KalitaR & D, Oil India Limited

Biotechnology for Energy

nologies have limitations that restrict their long-term effectiveness. In partic-ular, oil or waste treatments may lead to increased formation damage by forc-ing deposited high molecular weight paraffin into the formation where they can contribute to pore throat plugging and lead to production loss.

Development of MCPs represents a successful alternative technology to remove paraffin deposits without caus-ing lasting formation damage. Bailey et al (2001) have observed that long term use of MCPs do not show any damage to the oil field production system.

The changes produced in paraffinic oils associated with control of wax deposi-tion include reduction in the viscosity of the oil by microbial treatment. This reduction in viscosity is probably due to the production of solvent molecules by the microbial population. These solvent molecules include alcohols, ketones and aldehydes and are functionally similar to oil field chemicals used as wax dis-persants and pour point depressants. The metabolic capacity of the micro-organisms to degrade high molecular weight paraffin molecules results in a change in the hydrocarbon profile of the oil as detected by gas chromatography. This reduction in viscosity may lead to increased relative permeability and in-creased oil production.

The deposition of paraffin in the tubing of wells producing high wax crude oil and some flow lines has been a recur-ring problem for OIL. The problem has been mitigated primarily by mechani-cal scraping of the tubing. Though the method is adequate to tackle the problem, it is manpower intensive and frequent fishing of scraping tools occurs, recovery of which requires costly work-over operation. Therefore, a number of attempts have been made to tackle the problem through various other means such as magnetic fluid conditioner, chemical treatment to find out an alternative method to overcome this problem, with mixed results.

Microbial treatment is an emerging technology in the field of controlling/preventing paraffin deposition in the pipe walls. OIL has introduced this technology in its oil fields in Assam. ONGC and The Energy and Resources

Institute (TERI), New Delhi, have been actively involved in application of bio-technology in solving problems of the petroleum industry. OIL held detailed discussions with IRS, ONGC to ex-plore the possibility of collaborative activities in this field. Paraffin inhab-iting / degrading bacterial consortium have been developed by ONGC jointly with TERI, and successfully imple-mented in their Ahmadabad, Mehsana and Assam asset with good results. Based on the discussion, it was decided to implement this technology in 5 oil wells of OIL’s fields.

The microbial system developed joint-ly by ONGC and TERI is a consortium of paraffin degrading bacteria, nutri-ent supplements and growth enhancer. The bacterial consortium is named as PDS-10, and is a naturally occurring micro-aerophilic, thermophilic bac-teria capable of degrading paraffin up to a down-hole temperature of 90oC. It degrades the waxy portion of the crude oil and thus reduces the pour point and improves the flow behavior of the oil. The paraffin degrading efficiency is best between temperatures 55o to 70oC. Paraffin degradation is around 82% at 55oC, 53% at 70oC and 25% at 90oC.

OIL has carried out five microbial par-affin remediation jobs in producing wells having severe paraffin deposi-tional problems, in consultation with ONGC and TERI.

During the discussions with ONGC and TERI, it emerged that the bacterial consortium being used for OIL’s op-eration works primarily via formation of a tough bio-film on the tubing wall. Hence, thorough removal of deposited waxes from the tubing wall to expose the steel surface for biofilm formation constituted a pre-requisite for the job design formulated by ONGC. For the microbial treatment job, the well selec-tion criteria included:

1. Severity of wax deposition – the daily and alternate day scraping wells to be considered

2. Reservoir temperature should be be-low 90oC

3. Water content should be minimum 10% as the bacteria require water to survive and grow

During the process of selecting the

wells that could meet the above crite-ria, it was found that most of the wells meeting the aforesaid criteria are lo-cated in Nahorkatiya and Shalmari re-gion, However, these wells have very low reservoir pressure. Therefore, it was felt that contact time of bacte-rial solution with tubing wall is likely to be much less than desired. ONGC personnel, based on their experience of field jobs in the Cambay basin, were of the opinion that, by pump-ing the bacterial solution very slowly, the contact time can be increased and positive result may be expected. Most of the wells having scraping problem and higher reservoir pressure also have reservoir temperature greater than 90oC. But as the wax deposi-tion in the tubing takes place only at around 1000m and shallower, where the temperature is usually below 50oC, the bio-film formation should occur preventing the wax deposition even if reservoir temperatures are higher than 90oC. ONGC personnel preferred that some live and active bacteria solution in the reservoir prolongs effectiveness of the treatment. Since at temperature above 90oC, the bacterial consortium will not survive, such wells do not constitute ideal candidates for such treatment. However, considering the certainty of bio film formation at the depth where the problem occurs, it was decided to carry out treatment in such wells on experimental basis. Ac-cordingly, five (5) wells were selected for the treatment:

1. S-1 and S-2 having low reservoir pressure and reservoir temperature below 90oC

2. M-89, N-493 and K-6 having higher reservoir pressure and reservoir temperature higher than 90oC

Based on the field job carried out, it emerged that :

1. The bacterial treatment is effective in reducing the deposition in tubing.

2. An increase in production and de-crease in carbon number distribution due to degradation of long-chain al-kanes by the microbial consortia has been observed. An example is given in. Representative graphs showing improvement in production profile and reduction in Carbon number are shown.

3. Candidate well should not be below


hydrostatic and should have good Injectivity.

4. The technology is cost effective compared to other available tech-niques.

5. Better results could be expected if local bacterial strain are identified and developed from OIL’s opera-tional areas in Assam.

Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery (MEOR)

The MEOR technology involves the use of specific microbes capable of producing useful metabolites (gases, solvents, surfactants, polymer, acids etc.) to recover additional oil from de-pleted petroleum reservoirs.

In the reservoir, MCPs produce sev-eral enhanced oil recovery compounds that decrease capil-lary forces and in-crease oil mobility. The mechanism of various chemicals produced in the process has been explained in figure given below. Micro-bial metabolites such as surfactants, sol-vents, low-molecular weight organic acids, and gases are well-known oil mobiliz-ing agents. These products work by the same mechanism as traditional EOR chemicals to reduce interfacial tension, decrease oil viscos-ity, and improve the microscopic sweep efficiency of the wa-ter-flood.

OIL decided to im-plement MEOR in its fields in suitable wells having Bottom Hole Temperature (BHT) of 70-85°C in two phases of 3 and 5 wells respectively. The bacterial strains required for this was developed by ONGC & TERI effective up to 90°C from formation water samples.

Eight MEOR jobs were executed in the fields in three different reservoirs in two phases. Bacterial strain devel-

oped indigenously from formation water of one oil field was used. A vol-ume of 200 kls of nutrient and bac-terial solution was injected in each of these eight wells. An incubation period of 3-4 weeks was allowed. In the first phase, two of the three wells responded well and an incre-mental oil of 600 kls was obtained in 6-7 months. The third well however did not respond. In the second phase out of five MEOR jobs, oil gain was achieved from three MEOR jobs. The oil gain in one well was marginal but in the other two wells it can be con-sidered as significant. Incremental oil of about 2200 Kls was obtained dur-ing about one year monitoring of the wells. The effectiveness of the treat-ment appears to have lasted for 6-7 months. A summary of the results of all the 8 wells is shown in table be-low :

Based on the field implementation of MEOR, the results have been found to be encouraging and the following broad generalizations could be arrived at :

• Out of 8 MEOR jobs, oil gain has been achieved from 5 MEOR jobs.

• Oil gain in 3 wells are significant and in 2 wells it can be considered to be marginal.

• Marginal oil gain in 1 well is consid-ered due to optimization of produc-tion operations rather than MEOR.

• In 2 wells there was significant loss of oil.

• The effectiveness of the treatment appears to last for about 6-7 months

• MEOR is cost-effective

Well No. Oil Gain, Kls Oil Loss, Kls Remarks

I 100 Wells monitored for 6-8 month post job period up to Dec 2005.

II 382

III 485

IV* Wells monitored for 10-13 month post job period up to Dec 2008* Marginal oil gain of ~ 153 kl in Well-IV is considered to be due to increase in productivity of the well due to production optimization process rather than MEOR

V 333

VI 1064

VII 1167

VIII 1771

Total gain or loss

3753 1549

Net oil gain = 2200 kl

Oil Gain / Loss MEOR Jobs


The photograph shown below is of MEOR job in the field.

A significant advantage of MCPs when compared to traditional technologies is that colonies remain in the formation for some period of time after produc-tion is resumed, and continue to metab-olize specific compounds and produce products, which affect oil properties. Strain-specific metabolic activity tar-gets long-chain paraffin’s and shortens the paraffin chain, causing a distinct shift in the hydrocarbon distribution. Direct metabolic action of the micro-organisms on the oil can reduce oil vis-cosity and increase relative permeabil-ity. Bio-surfactants can also produce changes in wettability, increasing rela-tive permeability. A variety of positive mechanisms are thus available in using MCPs to increase oil flow from the for-mation and increase production.

Geo-microbial Prospecting

Geo-microbial prospecting for hydro-carbons is an exploration method based on the seepage of light gaseous hydro-

carbons from oil / gas reservoirs to-wards the surface and their utilization

by hydrocarbon oxidizing bacte-ria.

It is an exploration method for hydro-carbons based on the premise that the light gaseous h y d r oca r b o n s , namely methane (C1), ethane (C2), propane (C3), and butane (C4) mi-grate upward from subsurface petro-leum accumula-tions by diffusion

and effusion (Horvitz, 1939) and are utilized by a variety of microorganisms present in the sub-soil ecosystem. The methane, ethane, propane and butane-oxidizing bacteria exclusively use these gases as carbon source for their meta-bolic activities and growth. These bac-teria are mostly found enriched in the shallow soils/sediments above hydrocar-bon –bearing structures and can differ-entiate between hydrocarbon prospec-tive and non-prospective areas (Tucker and Hitzman, 1994). The isolation and enumeration of specific C2+ alkane-oxidizing bacteria are used as indirect petroleum prospecting method (Da-vis, 1967). Microbial anomalies have been proved to be reliable indicators of oil and gas in the sub-surface (Pareja, 1994). A direct and positive relationship between the microbial population and hydrocarbon concentration in the soils has been observed in various producing reservoirs worldwide. The methane–oxi-dizing bacteria are usually predominant over gas fields as the gas reservoirs are

commonly dominated by methane. Thermogenic processes produce methane and substantial amounts of other saturated hydrocar-bons y irreversible reaction of residual organic matter or kerogen. Ethane, propane and butane are assumed to be originated from the mi-gration of thermogenically produced petroleum from depth and are usually not associated with generation in shallow soils.

A microbial prospecting method in-volves isolation and enumeration of vari-ous groups of methane, ethane, propane and butane-oxidizing bacteria in soil-soil strata for the delineation of hydrocarbon prospects in an area. The abundance of these hydrocarbon-oxidizing bacteria in the soils yields hydrocarbon signature on the surface and hence they are considered as indicator microbes. This method can be integrated with geological, geochemi-cal and geophysical methods to evaluate the hydrocarbon prospect of an area and to prioritize the drilling locations, there-by reducing drilling risks and achieving higher success in petroleum exploration (Pareja, 1994).

Bioremediation

Industrialization and extraction of natu-ral resources have resulted in large scale environmental contamination and pollu-tion. Large amounts of toxic waste have been dispersed in thousands of contami-nated sites spread across our nation. The challenge is to develop innovative and cost-effective solutions to decontami-nate polluted environments, to make them safe for human habitation and con-sumption, and to protect the functioning of the ecosystems that support life. Ad-vances in science and technology have enabled us to apply the potential of bio-logical diversity for pollution abatement which is termed as bioremediation.

Bioremediation allows natural process-es to clean up harmful chemicals in the environment. Microscopic “bugs” or microbes that live in soil and ground-water eat certain harmful chemicals, such as those found in gasoline and oil spills. When microbes completely di-gest these chemicals, they change them into water and harmless gases such as carbon dioxide.

In order for microbes to clean up harm-ful chemicals, the right temperature, nutrients (fertilizers), and amount of oxygen must be present in the soil and groundwater. These conditions allow the microbes to grow and multiply – and eat more chemicals. When conditions are not right, microbes grow too slowly or die. Or they can create more harmful chemicals. With the right temperature and amount of oxygen and nutrients, microbes can do their work to “biore-mediate” the harmful chemicals.


Bioremediation is very safe because it relies on microbes that naturally occur in soil. These microbes are helpful and pose no threat to people at the site or in the community.

No dangerous chemicals are used in bioremediation. The nutrients added to make microbes grow are fertilizers, commonly used in gardens. Because bioremediation changes the harm-ful chemicals into water and harmless gases, the harmful chemicals are com-pletely destroyed. The time it takes to bioremediate a site depends on several factors :

• Types and amounts of harmful chemicals present

• Size and depth of the polluted area• Type of soil and the conditions pres-

ent• Whether the cleanup occurs above

ground or undergroundBioremediation takes advantage of natural processes. Polluted soil and groundwater can be cleaned at the site without having to move them some-where else. If the right conditions ex-ist or can be created underground, soil and groundwater can be cleaned with-out having to dig or pump. This allows cleanup workers to avoid contact with polluted soil and groundwater. It also prevents the release of harmful gases into the air. Because microbes change the harmful chemicals into water and harmless gases, few if any wastes are created.

Often, bioremediation does not require as much equipment or labor as most other methods. Therefore, it is usually cheaper.

Disposal of Formation Water

Although microbes play a very positive role in mitigating a variety of problems encountered in oil field operations, they do not always play a benign role. One such deleterious effect of microbes

relates to their presence in produced formation water, and concomitant de-crease in the efficiency of water dispos-al. The presence of microbial colonies has been proved to decrease the injec-tivity of produced formation water in shallow reservoirs. In OIL, produced water is normally disposed into allu-vium sand reservoirs at shallow depths. While the disposal depths were in the ranges of 500 – 800 m till recent times, current statutory regulations require disposal to be carried out at depths below 1,200 m to ensure minimal risk of upward migration of such disposed water. In most of these disposal wells, injectivity had been found to be com-paratively lower and rapid decline in injectivity is observed even after acid / solvent stimulation.

Moreover, because of increased water production due to ageing of fields, its handling is of concern. The physical ap-pearance of the Eocene formation water especially from storage tanks showed suspended black particles with pungent odor primarily due to large scale mi-crobial activities (SRB) in the system. Solids generated due to high SRB activ-

ity along with high oil content and other suspended solids present was considered to be the cause of rapid decline in injec-tivity in these deep disposal wells. The presence of SRB was further confirmed through API RP 38 standard procedure. SRB related corrosion though not sig-nificant, was also observed in formation water handling and processing infra-structure. The entire problem was taken up for detailed study and identification of remedial measures jointly with M/s The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), New Delhi, India.

One of the Oil Collecting Stations (OCS), where SRB problem was severe and which produced approximately 1,200 m3/day of produced water, was selected for trial purpose. A number of samples were collected from different sites over a period of one year during the study period, this was necessary for comparing the seasonal variation of the SRB population. Microbiologi-cal investigations of high temperature, petroleum rich strata from a number of geographically distant wells revealed physiologically diverse assemblages of thermophilic and hyperthermophilic anaerobic microorganisms.

The petroleum production process envi-ronment is particularly suitable for ac-tivities of SRB because it handles large volumes of oxygen free water from un-derground reservoirs. The water is rich in nutrients and can become very sour with increases in concentration of hy-

Characterization of SRB strains: Morphology


drogen sulfide (H2S). This foul smelling and corrosive ‘sour gas’ is toxic to life and liable to cause cracking and pitting of susceptible steels like production tub-ings, flow lines and surface units. Large hydrogen sulfide production in oil reser-voir is due to increased activity of SRB, as they use sulfate as terminal electron acceptor and reduce it to sulfide. De-terioration of metal under biologically produced hydrogen sulfide is termed as Microbial Induced Corrosion (MIC) or Bio-corrosion. Under these conditions biocorrosion via hydrogen sulfide (H2S), cause economic drainage to oil-dwelling industries costing millions of dollars per annum. Thus researchers in this field had directed attention to the activities of SRBs in oil reservoir. Several SRBs have been isolated and identified from oil fields like Thermodesulfovibrio, Ther-modefulfotomaculum, Desulfovibrio, etc. Most of these species and genera are involved in the biological process of H2S production in oil well reservoir.

It is also known that petroleum compo-sition varies widely between reservoirs, which might have an impact on the microbial biodiversity of such environ-ments (Tello et al, 2004). Sulphate Re-ducing Bacteria (SRB) play an impor-

tant role in anaerobic corrosion in oil and gas fields. Bactericides have been found to be effec-tive in controlling this problem, while Nitrates have also been used with some success.

Laboratory investiga-tions included identifi-cation, characterization and isolation of various

strains of SRB using 16S rDNA gene sequencing and designing different media compositions for inoculation and culturing of SRB strains. Microbial diversity of hyper thermophilic SRB in various produced water samples col-lected from different points were stud-ied in details.

It was found that a total of 147 strains of SRB exist in produced water from this field, out of which 43 were identified, which belonged to 14 different gen-era. These 14 purified bacterial isolates were identified by 16S rDNA sequence. Based on these strain identification, two most suitable Bactericides were selected for field test.

Through this study, suitable bacteri-cides were identified and Minimum Inhibitory Concentration (MIC) op-timized using Time Kill Test (TKT) method. A field trial for 12 months was successfully carried out using two identified Bactericides (Bromine type and Amine type) by alternating both every fortnight. After Bactericide treatment, the SRB was totally under control and also the quality of treated water as well as injectivity of disposal wells improved and sustained signifi-

cantly. The entire produced water from the said field is now being safe-ly managed and disposed under-ground with sus-tained injectivity of disposal wells.

The photograph shown below is of the bactericides dosing adjustment in the field.

Scale and Corrosion Control

Microbial corrosion, also called bacte-rial corrosion, bio-corrosion, microbio-logically influenced corrosion, or mi-crobial-induced corrosion is corrosion caused or promoted by microorgan-isms, usually chemo-autotrophs. Some Sulfate Reducing Bacteria (SRBs) produce hydrogen sulfide, which can cause sulfide stress cracking. Other bacteria produce various acids, both organic and mineral, or ammonia.

Both aerobic and anaerobic bacteria cause corrosion. Layers of anaerobic bacteria can exist in the inner parts of the corrosion deposits, while the outer parts are inhabited by aerobic bacteria.

Observations that some of the bio-chemical produced by microorganisms had properties similar to scale and cor-rosion control chemicals lead to the de-velopment of new MCP product lines to address these oil field problems. The deposition of mineral scales in oil wells is a well-understood phenomenon. It is often related to the commingling of waters of different chemical types that produce a blend of ions that exceeds the solubility limit for compounds such as calcium carbonate, calcium sulfate or barium sulfate (to name the most com-monly encountered oil field scales). Scale deposition can also be related to temperature and pressure changes oc-curring in the production string as the fluid column is brought to the surface.

Conclusions

The historical use of microbial culture products clearly illustrates their ef-fectiveness in a wide range of oil field applications. The fact that their use has grown as an economic alternative to conventional technologies over the past two decades demonstrates their long-term viability for the industry. Microbes inhabit virtually all terrestrial and ma-rine habitats, including environments of chemical and thermal extremes.

Microbial biotechnology is in its early stages and, therefore, consider-ing their usefulness, the applications are only expected to grow. The suc-cessful applications of biotechnology in the oil industry has helped gain widespread acceptance. Realizing


the advantages of using microbial biotechnology in addressing oil field problems, OIL has been actively en-gaged in pursuing this safe and cost-effective solution with encouraging results. OIL has initiated the process of setting up a modern state-of-the-art laboratory for carrying out R&D activities related to the applications of microbial technology for field op-erations. Active R&D in the areas of microbial prospecting for oil and gas, and bioremediation will also be taken up once the laboratory is established.

References

1. Prasad, M.N.V.2011. Bioremedia-tion, its application to contaminated sites in India. Publication of Min-istry of Ministry of Environment & Forests., Govt. of India, 90 pages.

2. Tucker, J. and Hitzman, D. 1994. Detailed microbial surveys help to improve reservoir characterization. Oil Gas Jour., Vol.6, 65-69p.

3. A Citizen’s Guide to Bioremedia-tion. United States Environmental Protection Agency.

4. Bailey, S.A., Kenney, T.M., and Schneider, D.R.2001. Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery: Diverse Successful Applications of Bio-technology in the Oil Field. SPE 72129. Paper presented at the SPE Asia Pacific Improved Oil Recovery Conference, Kulia Lumpur, Malay-sia,8-9 October, 2001

5. Davis, J. 1967. Petroleum Microbi-ology. Elsevier, pp.197-224.

6. Francesca de Ferra. 2007. Energy: The Next Biotechnology Challenge. Journal of Pet.Tech., Soc.Petroleum Engineers.

7. Horvitz, I. 1939. On geochemical pros-pecting. Geophysics, Vol.4, 210-228

8. Pareja, L.1994. Combined micro-bial, seismic surveys predict oil and gas occurrences in Bolivia. Oil Gas Jour.Vol.24, 68-70.

9. Orphan VJ, Taylor LT, Hafenbradl D, and Delong EF (2000). Culture

dependent and culture independent characterization of microbial as-semblages associated with high temperature petroleum reservoirs. Applied and Environmental Micro-biology. 66 (2): 700-711.

10.Tello EM, Fardeau ML, Thomas P, Ramirez F, Casalot L, Cayol JL, Garcia JL, and Ollivier B (2004). Petrotoga mexicana sp. nov., a novel thermophilic, anaerobic and xylanolytic bacterium isolated from an oil-producing well in the Gulf of Mexico. International Journal Sys-tematic and Evolutionary Microbi-ology, 54: 169 - 174.

11. Salinas MB, Fardeau ML, Thomas P, Cayol JL, Patel BKC, and Ollivier B (2004). Mahella australiensis gen. nov., sp. nov., a moderately thermo-philic anaerobic bacterium isolated from an Australian oil well. Interna-tional Journal Systematic and Evo-lutionary Microbiology, 54: 2169 – 2173.

Ibha kalita is a Deputy Chief Research Scien-tist with Oil India Limit-ed where she has been working for the last 20 years.

She earned BE degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Gu-wahati in 1990. Her area of interest includes Flow assurance, IOR etc.

Mr. B. B. Guha, Chief Research Scientist, R&D Depart-ment, OIL has done his M. Sc. degree with Physical Chemistry as his specialization from IIT Kharagpur.

Mr. Guha initially worked at Cement Research Insti-tute, New Delhi on various projects for 5 years and in the Reservoir discipline at ONGC, WR Cambay Project for 2 years before joining OIL in 1984, He worked as field chemist for some time and was in charge of

PVT-BHP section for a long period. Presently he looks after IOR-EOR section of R & D Dept. Implemented MEOR [Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery] and Water shut-off in OIL’s wells through in house efforts.

B B GuhaIbha Kalita

Dr Srinivasan V RajuM C Nihalani

Dr.Srinivasan V.Raju obtained his M.Sc. and Ph.D in geology from Osmania Uni-versity, Hyderabad.

After a brief stint with the Atomic Minerals Division (Department of Atomic Energy), he joined Oil India Limited as a Senior Ge-ologist in the year 1983. He has worked in

various projects of OIL and was also deputed to the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons. His main areas of interest include Petroleum Geochemistry, and basin modeling. Dr. Raju was instrumental in development of the Pe-troleum Geochemistry facilities in the R& D Department of Oil India Limited in Duliajan, Assam. He has published/presented about 25 technical papers in various journals and in international symposia and conferences. He is currently Head of the Research & Development Department of Oil India Limited, and is a life member of the Geological Society of India.

Mr. M. C. Nihalani, Chief Research Scientist, R&D Department, Oil India Limited (OIL) has done his M. Sc. degree in Physical Chemistry from Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India in 1982.

Since then he has been working in OIL and has 28 years of experience in various fields like, Well Stimulation, Development of Work Over and Drilling fluids, Formation Water Clarification, Water Injection etc. He has published/presented about 14 technical papers in vari-ous journals and in international symposia and conferences. Mr. Nihalani contributed actively in establishing R&D Department in OIL and is an active member of Society of Petroleum Engineers since 1985.


Rapid increase in the demand of transport fu-els have necessitated the search for alternate sources from the renewable resource. It is also clear that fossil fuel based transport fuels are

not sustainable in the long run. Additionally, since a ma-jor portion of green house gas emission, especially car-bon dioxide, is attributed to transport sector motivated research efforts are being made for carbon neutral or low GHG transport fuels. It is obvious that the source for these alternate fuels has to be in biomass as these will partially offset the carbon dioxide emissions during the period of their growth by the process of photosynthesis.

Ethanol has long been used as a blend component of gas-oline. It has advantageous like higher octane, lower CO2 emissions and is miscible to a large extent with gasoline. The ethanol blended gasoline can also be used in IC en-gines upto a certain level with little or no modifications in the engines. In North America ethanol is produced from corn while in countries like India and Brazil etha-nol is produced from sugarcane molasses. The enormous farm land available to US has resulted in very large scale production of corn and a substantial part of corn has been diverted for producing ethanol. However, this alternate use of corn has resulted in increased prices of corn whose main use has been as an animal and chicken feed. There-

fore, a serious debate on food v/s fuel has focused words attention for producing fuel from crop land. In India and Brazil sugarcane juice and molasses are the main sources for producing ethanol. While Brazil is bless with very large crop land area having enough water to grow sugar-cane, in India the situation is not that favorable. We have limited area available for sugarcane crop which is highly water intensive. Consequently, the Indian programme of blending 5 to 10% ethanol in gasoline, as mandated by Government ,has suffered road block in past. It is esti-mated that India may not have sufficient surplus ethanol available from molasses to fulfill Government mandate of 10% blends in gasoline. Therefore, it is imperative for us to look for alternate sources of ethanol production.

Ethanol has been produced from wood during last cen-tury in Germany where wood was treated with dilute acid to hydrolyse the cellulose to glucose and then to ethanol. The Germans had industrial process which could give up to 50 gallons of ethanol per ton of biomass. During World War-I , a similar process involving one stage hy-drolysis of wood with dilute sulfuric acid was adopted by Americans. However, the ethanol yields were lower. Discovery of large fields of crude oil and easy available of fossil based gasoline resulted in drop of all research efforts on wood based ethanol and further research work

Lignocellulosic Ethanol: Indian efforts in hardcore BiotechnologyDr. D K TuliIndian Oil Corporation; R&D centre

Biotechnology for Energy

almost stopped for next four decades. Recent awareness about limitation of fossil fuels and their environmental impact has again renewed interest in producing ethanol from biomass.

All biomass, may it be forest waste, agricultural waste, wood or certain type of grasses are chemically known as lignocellulosic material. This bio-mass contains predominantly lignin, cellulose and hemi-cellulose. Typical-ly, lignocellulosic materials consist of:

• 40 -50 % Cellulose• 20 – 40 % Hemicelluloses• 10 – 40 % Lignin.Cellulose can be easily converted by the known technologies to ethanol. However, in biomass the cellulose and hemi cellulose are strongly pro-tected by lignin layer. Lignin is high-ly stable material which protects the plants from the attack of microbes, effect of nature and protection from water. Therefore, in order to make available cellulose and hemi-cellu-lose for ethanol conversion the lignin layer has to be removed. This is the most difficult step in the conversion of lignocellulosic material to ethanol.

Although lignocellulose is the most abundant plant material resource, its susceptibility has been curtailed by its rigid structure. Therfore, an effec-tive pretreatment is needed to liber-ate the cellulose and hemi-cellulose from the lignin shield is necessary so as to render it accessible for a sub-sequent hydrolysis step. Most pre-treatments are done through physi-cal or chemical means and now both physical and chemical methods are collectively used to get the clean separation. For better treatment of biomass , size reduction is the first step and the almost powered biomass is then taken for treatment with ei-ther dilute alkali of dilute acid solu-tions at elevated tempretures. This treatment separates the lignin from cellusic material. The cellulosic ma-terial which is a polymer of either glucose or pentoses is then treated with special enzymes to destroy the polymeric structure and to obtain monomeric sugars. Pre-treatment is an extremely important step and is also step which accounts for about 40 % of the total process costs. Also

an ideal pre-treatment step has to mi-nimise the production of certain bye-products like furfural which later has inhibitory effect on the enzymes to be used in the subsequent steps Some of the commonly used pre-treatment techniques include acid hydroly-sis, steam explosion, ammonia fiber expansion, organosolve, and alka-line wet. Ammonia Fiber Expansion (AFEX) is a promising pretreatment with no inhibitory effect and this method has been adopted by technol-ogy developed by DBT-ICT center, Mumbai and is under scale up for 10 tons per day plant.

There are following stages to pro-duce ethanol using a biological ap-proach:

1. A "pretreatment" phase, to make the lignocellulosic material such as wood or straw amenable to hy-drolysis,

2. Cellulose hydrolysis (celluloly-sis), to break down the molecules into sugars;

3. Microbial fermentation of the sugar solution;

4. Distillation to produce roughly 95% pure alcohol.

5. Dehydration to bring the ethanol concentration to over 99.5%

Cellulose is found in plant cell walls, it's the most abundant naturally oc-curring organic molecule on the planet, a potentially limitless source of energy. But it's a tough molecule to break down. Bacteria and other microorganisms use specialized en-zymes to do the job. Nature has given

animals elegant ways to digest cellu-lose to produce sugars . Termites have unique microorganisms in their guts that help them process wood they eat. For scientists, these examples were good clues. Specific enzymes have been isolated e.g from termite guts which were later used to hydrolyze cellulose to fermentable sugars.

The major area of research in pro-duction of lignocellulosic ethanol has been to develop robust, cheap and scalable enzymes which can deploymerise cellulose and hemi-cellulose to ethanol. These enzymes, which are mostly once through, are presently costly and make the total process of cellulosic ethanol unvi-able. There has been intense re-search, mostly in US and Europe, to develop suitable enzymes which can hydrolyse both cellulose and hemi-cellulose to fermentable sugars. Over the past decade enzyme R&D has re-sulted in five fold fall in their prices and also seen quantum jump in their efficacy. However this trend needs to continue further and still a substan-tial cost reduction is necessary.

Even after getting the fermentable sugars the problem to get ethanol still needs more innovations. Cellu-lose after hydrolysis gives predomi-nantly glucose and the technology to ferment glucose to ethanol is fairly well established. However the hemi-cellulose part after hydrolysis gives five membered sugars or pentoses for which the fermentation is still evolv-ing. In order to get good economics


we need to ferment all pentoses to ethanol and that calls for new type of micro-organisms. This area where both 5 and 6 membered sugars are co-fermented by suitable micro-organ-ism is currently the main R&D focus.

After having fermented the sugars into ethanol, which is generally at about 10 % concentration , the next two steps are distillation to bring ethanol purity to fuel grade i.e. about 99.5 %. There is enough expertise and existing tech-nology to take care of this part.

India has taken several R&D projects to develop the hydrolytic enzymes and micro-organisms. Department of Biotechnology ( DBT) , Govern-ment of India has sponsored proj-ects to several universities and re-search institutes to screen and select

Research Paper Number 1

BIOMASS & BIOE ERG 35 (20011) 3584-3591

Enzymatic depolymerization of Ricinus communis, a potential lignocellulosic for improved saccharification Mainak Mukhopadhyay a, Arindam Kuila a, D.K. Tuli

b, Rintu Banerjee a

a Microbial Biotechnology and Down-stream Processing Lab. Agricultural and Food Engineering Department, In-dian Institute of Technology, Kharag-pur 721 302, India

b Indian Oil Corporation Ltd. R & D Centre, Faridabad 121 007, India

Residual lignocellulosics left to de-cay in fields and forest has a huge potential to serve as a low cost feed-stock for production of bioethanol. In Indian subcontinent Ricinus commu-nis is a major lignocellulosics grow-ing in arid conditions containing 42% cellulose and 19.8% lignin. In the present study, Response Surface Methodology (RSM) based on Cen-tral Composite Design (CCD) has been used to explore the effects of pH, temperature, solid to liquid ra-

tio (w/ v), enzyme concentration and incubation time on enzymatic depo-lymerization of R. commmunis. The maximum delignification obtained was 85.69%. In case of lignified R. communis the optimum reducing sugar produced was about 288.83 mg/g dry substrate, whereas, in case of delignified R. communis the opti-mum reducing sugar produced was about 775.17 mg/g dry delignified substrate. After delignification re-ducing sugar yield was increased to about 2.68 fold.

Accepted 6 May 2011 Available online 2 June 2011

Research Paper Number 2

Accessibility of enzymatically delignified Bambussa bambos for efficient hydrolysis at minimum cellulase loading: an optimization study Arindam Kuila a, Mainak Mukhopadhyal, D. K. Tuli b,

Rintu Banerjee a. *

a Microbial Biotechnology and Down-stream Processing Laboratory, Agri-cultural and Food Engineering De-partment, Indian Institute of Techno logy, Kharagpur, India 721 302

Given below are the abstracts of their research work which is published.

the enzymes and micro-organisims . International Centre of Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology (IC-GEB), ICT-DBT centre at Mumbai , IOC(R&D) at Faridabad have com-mitted enough resources for devel-opment of enzymes & micro-organ-isims. It has also been realised that it is a mammoth task for any single laboratory to do it alone and there-fore most of the research efforts are being made in consortium approach.

Contribution of Petrotech Society

Petrotech Society under its scheme to support the PhD programmes sanc-tioned fellowship at IIT (Kharagpur). Two students under the guidance of Prof Rintu Baneerjee and Dr R Sa-rin of IOC (R&D) were selected.

However, soon after the sudden de-mise of Dr Sarin, the onus of selec-tion of research area and guidance got shifted to the author. The areas selected for research were primarily to explore enzymatic pre-treatment of some selected biomass for im-proved sugar production. Extensive work was carried out for enzymatic pretreatment and saccharification of Bambusa Bamboo for production of fermentable sugars and then ethanol. The enzymes used were character-ized properly.

Under this research programmes these students have done exceptionally good work and most of this has been accepted by reputed biotechnology journals. Both students are in process of submitting their PhD thesis.

b Indian Oil Corporation Ltd., R & D Centre, Faridabad, India 121 007

Abstract

In the present investigation, Bambusa bambos was used for optimization of enzymatic

pretreatment and saccharification. Maximum enzymatic delignification achieved was 84%, after 8 h of incu-bation time. Highest reducing sugar yield from enzyme pretreated Bam-busa bambos was 818.01 mg/g dry substrate after 8 h of incubation time at a low cellulase loading (endoglu-canase, P-glucosidase, exoglucanase and xylanase were 1.63 IU/mL, 1.28 IU/mL, 0.08 IU/mL and 47.93 IU/mL, respectively). Enzyme treated sub-strate of Bambusa bambos was char-acterized by analytical techniques such as Fourier transformed infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray diffrac-tion (XRD) and Scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The FTIR spec-trum showed that the absorption peaks of several functional groups were decreased after enzymatic pre-treatment. XRD analysis indicated that cellulose crystallinity of enzyme treated samples was increased due to


Can new technology take the oil out of asphalt?

The city of Des Moines, Iowa has paved part of a bicycle trail with a green re-placement called “bioasphalt” that’s derived from plant and tree matter, rather than petroleum.

The project is a demonstration to test whether bioasphalt can take the same beating from seasonal temperature swings and weather that traditional pavement can handle.

Originally developed at Iowa State University by professor Christopher Williams, who sought to improve the extreme temperature of asphalt, bio-asphalt could create a new market for the crop residues from Iowa’s many farms.

The new material isn’t just green be-cause it’s made from plants — it’s also because it saves energy and money, because it requires lower temperatures for mixing and paving compared to conventional asphalt.

Here’s how it’s made: Corn stalks, wood wastes and other types of biomass are

Dr. D. K. Tuli holds Ph.D. in Synthetic Chemistry followed by over two decades of varied experience in R & D in the hy-drocarbon industry with a special interest in Synthetics and Biotics. Dr. Tuli, has to his credit, 14 US patents, two European patents and over 20 Indian patents. He has also published over 65 research papers in professional journals.Dr Tuli did his post doctoral research at university of Liverpool in 1978-81 and was senior research fellow at Robert Robinson labs, UK during 1986-88.Presently, Dr Tuli is General Manager (Alternate Energy) leading nanotechnology , biotechnology , biofuels & solar energy research in IOC.

D K Tuli

the removal of amorphous lignin and hemicelluloses. SEM image showed that surface structure of Bambusa bambos was distorted after enzymatic pretreatment.

Received: March 25,20/1, accepted: May 9,2011, published: May 27,2011

Research Paper number 3

Production of Ethanol from Ligno-cellulosics: An Enzymatic Venture Arindam Kuila a, Mainak Mukhopadhyal, D. K. Tuli b,

Rintu Banerjee a. *

a Microbial Biotechnology and Down-stream Processing Laboratory, Ag-ricultural and Food Engineering Department, Indian Institute of Tech-nology, Kharagpur, India 721302

b Indian Oil Corporation Ltd., R & D Centre, Faridabad, India 121 007

Abstract

The major objective of the present investigation was to evaluate the ef-fect of enzymatic preetreatment on Lantana camara for improved yield of reducing sugar and bioethanol producction. An optimum enzy-matic delignification (88.79 %) was achieved after 8 h of incubation. Af-ter delignification the substrate was further treated with the mixture of carbohydratases for appropriate sac-charification. The enzyme treated substrate yielded maximum reducing sugar (713.33 mg/g dry substrate) af-ter 9 h of saccharification. Monosac-charide content in the sacccharified samples were quantified using high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) system. Using conventional yeast strain, 9.63 g/L bioethanol was produced from saccharified samples

quickly heated without oxygen. The ther-mochemical process, which is called fast pyrolysis, yields two products: a liquid bio-oil, which can be used to manufac-ture fuels, chemicals and asphalt; and solid biochar, which can be used to enrich soil and remove greenhouses gases from the atmosphere.

Williams developed the bioasphalt using bio-oil fractions from a pyrolysis tech startup named Avello Bioenergy, which was started by Iowa State graduates. Now, Avello has licensed the technology to produce oak-based bioasphalt for parts of Waveland Trail on the northwest side of Des Moines.

For now, the mixture is only 5 percent bioasphalt. Williams said success would lead to tests with higher percentages.

“We have a fairly active program for finding ways to conserve energy and be more sustainable,” said Des Moines city engineer Jeb Brewer in a statement. “We’re interested in seeing how this works out and whether it can be part of our toolbox to create more sustainable projects.”

Can bio-asphalt cut the petroleum out of pavement?

of Lantana camara. Structural chang-es of Lantana camara before and af-ter enzyymatic pretreatment were further investigated through Fourier transformed infrared spectrooscopy (FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD)

and Scanning electron microscopy (SEM).

Received: March 25,20/11, accepted: May 9,20//, published: May 27,2011


Asset Reliability

Introduction

Asset Integrity Management is vast, as it is to be exercised throughout the lifecycle of an Asset i.e. from conceptuliza-tion to abandonment /decommissioning. It is important to note that Asset Integrity is not only the concern of operator but that of legislator, insurer and consumer too.

The issue of Asset Integrity is as pertinent today as it ever was. In today’s context it becomes all the more important, considering the fact that there is growing competion, growth pressure, cutting cost, increased awareness about safety and environment etc. The concept of Asset Integrity is very rel-evant in context of India because of the high growth regis-tered and projected in coming years, number of new proj-ects lined up for execution – be it in Infrastructure sector, Mining sector, Manufacturing sector or Service sector and billions of dollars riding on these projects. While execut-ing these projects we need to ensure the quality, service life and safety of the Assets and at the same time environmental concerns are fully addressed & complied.

In my article, I have tried to answer basic questions, what, why and how of Asset Integrity Management (AIM) to es-tablish its’ importance to modern industry.

Case Studies

We need to understand why AIM is required, so that the importance and need for AIM is fully understood and at the same time we will be able to identify some of the factors

that lead to compromise of Asset Integrity.

To illustrate the importance of AIM and why it is required, some mishaps/accidents such as Bhopal Gas Tragedy, Piper Alpha Accident, Texas City Refinery accident, IOC Jaipur Depot fire and more recently the blowout in one of the deep-water well of BP in Gulf of Mexico have been revisited to briefly touch upon the factors that caused these accidents.

In the Bhopal Gas Tragedy, Methyl Isocynate (MIC) – a toxic gas – was released into the open atmosphere, to pre-vent explosion of the tank it was stored in, which resulted in killing of thousands of people and disabling many more for their entire lives. On that fateful night of 3rd Dec.’84, MIC storage tank became pressurized on account of con-tamination of MIC with water resulting in an exothermic reaction between the two. MIC, as a gas, has to be stored in a liquid form. However, at the time of the incident, the refrigeration unit designed to cool the liquid was shut down as an economy measure and water was being poured around the tank to cool it - A potentially lethal practice, since water reacts exothermically with MIC, probably due to ignorance.

On the day of the disaster water leaked into tank causing a build- up of pressure and temperature. The management continued to pour water which further leaked into the tank causing a runaway exothermic reaction. To prevent the tank from exploding the safety valves were opened. The man-agement decided to release the gas into the atmosphere rather than have the tank explode which could have caused a greater disaster. The release of gas was a contingency plan

Asset Integrity Management – A Must for Modern IndustryA.K. HazarikaDirector (Onshore)

and had to be adopted because the oth-er safety features such as caustic soda scrubber, flare system or water curtain either failed or were under designed. Everybody knows what happened af-terwards of releasing of Methyl Isocy-nate gas which is very dangerous for human life and as a result thousands of people died in a day and many more became invalid for life.

Piper Alpha Accident is one of the most disastrous accidents in the his-tory of oil and gas industry. Piper Al-pha platform was originally built to handle crude oil, had been recently modified to handle gas and conden-sate. Various modules of the platform were separated by firewalls instead of explosion proof walls as should have been the case after it was modified to handle gas and condensate as well. On 6th July, 1988 series of explosions shook the platform and the ensuing fire engulfed the platform, killing about 167 persons. Inquiry reports brought out the fact that a condensate pump, whose Pressure Safety Valve (PSV) had been removed for maintenance should not have been started under any circumstances but was unfortunately the pump started by the shift in opera-tion as there was no record to show the PSV was under maintenance. The work permit stating that the PSV was under maintenance was either not seen or located or was missing and led to a disaster of such magnitude.

Texas City Refinery explosion on 23rd March’05 resulted in massive fire that claimed the lives of 15 workers and in-jured many more. The explosion and fire occurred after personnel responsi-ble for the startup greatly overfilled the raffinate splitter tower and overheated its contents, which resulted in over pressuring of its relief valves. Liquid was pumped into the tower for almost three hours without any liquid being removed or any action taken to achieve the lower liquid level mandated by the startup procedure. The liquid level in the tower just prior to the loss of con-tainment was at least 20 times higher than it should have been. Activation of the automatic liquid level control, as mandated in the startup procedure, would have prevented this occurring. The failure to follow procedures and the failure of safety control system

lead to greatly overfilling the raffinate splitter tower, and subsequent venting of liquids caused by overfilling and over heating of the liquid in the tower leading to a liquid relief to atmosphere and explosion thereafter.

IOC Jaipur Depot explosion and sub-sequent fire on 29th Oct.’09 led to loss of 11 lives and property worth more then Rs 300 crores. The accident oc-curred on account of leakage of petrol from a valve, while it was being trans-ferred from storage tank. Mr Lal, Ex Chairman HPCL in his enquiry report to the Central Government had stated that IOC personnel at the Jaipur depot did not observe "normal safety proce-dure." He also recorded in his report that gross negligence during transfer of fuel from storage tank resulted in a 10-12 meter fountain of petrol spread-ing vapours over a 250 meter radius for 75 minutes before a spark caused by start of two-wheeler or kitchen within the radius which triggered the fire that engulfed the entire depot. The root causes as reported in the report were: absence of site specific written operating procedures, absence of leak stopping devices from a remote loca-tion and insufficient understanding of hazards and risks and consequences. Further, even after the leak started, the "accident" could have been managed if safety measures provided in the Con-trol Room were functional.

More recently we witnessed the blow-out in one of the deep water well-Moc-cando of BP in the Gulf of Mexico resulting in fire and explosion on semi-submersible drilling rig Deepwater Horizon which resulted in loss of life of eleven crew members and sinking of Deepwater Horizon drilling rig. On the 20th Apr.’10, erroneous decision of replacing mud with sea water before plugging of the well, in order to save time and money, resulted in a blowout followed by fire and explosion on the rig. Millions of barrels of crude oil were released from the well into the sea before the well could be killed causing oil slick of unprecedented magnitude. Even after the wrong decision were made, the accident could have been prevented had either the cementing behind the final liner production cas-ing been good or BOP had functioned properly, but both were found wanting.

Factors affecting Asset Integrity

From the above cases we can see that these accidents occurred on account of improper design, faulty management policies and decisions, improper main-tenance and operation practices, modi-fications done without re-assessing the risk for the complex/ unit and com-promising on standard safe operating practices to cut down the cost etc.

Need for Asset Integrity

In all the above cases Asset Integrity has been compromised for one reason or the other and but the result have been disastrous for the company, em-ployees, surroundings and environ-ment. In all the cases precious lives were lost, plants/ machinery worth millions of dollars destroyed, compa-nies suffered losses of billions of dol-lars on account of loss of production, restoration & compensation etc. and environment has been badly damaged / polluted. The above mentioned cases clearly underline the fact that reasons for having Asset Integrity by far out-weigh the reasons for not having it or petty objectives that may compromise with Asset Integrity.

Asset Integrity Management System (AIMS)

Having understood why we require Asset Integrity and the factors affect-ing Asset Integrity it will be easier to understand, What is Asset Integrity Management System (AIMS)? AIMS is a means of achieving “Complete Asset Integrity”. Often people confuse AIMS with maintenance of Plant/ In-stallation/ equipment, but it is not so. Infact maintenance is just a part of the AIMS.

The objectives of an AIMS are the delivery of business requirements, maximizing return on assets while maintaining stakeholder value and minimizing business risks associated with accidents and loss of production. Thus, Asset Integrity Management System:

1. Facilitates and ensure that an asset perform its required function effec-tively and efficiently whilst protecting health, safety and the environment


2. Is a means of ensuring that the people, systems, processes and re-sources that deliver integrity are in place, in use and will perform when required over the whole lifecycle of the Asset.

3. Addresses the quality at every stage of the asset life cycle, from the design of new facilities to mainte-nance management to decommis-sioning.

4. Provides for Inspections, auditing/assurance and overall quality pro-cesses as some of the tools designed to make an integrity management system effective.

5. Endeavours to maintain the asset in a fit-for-service condition while extending its remaining life in the most reliable, safe, and cost-effec-tive manner.

Once the objectives of the Asset Integ-rity Management System are clearly understood and we have a clear under-standing of factors generally compro-mising Asset Integrity, putting AIMS in place becomes a relatively easy task.

As organizations grow more complex in operation and more global in scope, assets and technical integrity become key success factors. Corporate Man-agement has the most important role in the success of AIMS. Corporate Management has to demonstrate that it is serious and committed towards As-set Integrity. It has an important role in developing Asset Integrity culture within the organization.

Key Elements of AIMS

Effective AIMS is based on PDCA (Plan, Do, Check and Act) concept and has clearly defined roles and respon-sibilities at different levels. Key Ele-ments of AIMS are:

1. Policies: AIMS should have well defined policies for operations, maintenance, replacement, modifi-cation, risk management etc.

2. Roles and Responsibilities: AIMS clearly define the roles and respon-sibilities at all levels.

3. Criticality Assessment: AIMS has a Criticality Assessment Matrix showing the criticality of each com-ponent of the facility throughout their life cycle. Thereby assisting the management to focus on areas/

equipment at various stages of the life cycle.

4. Risk Assessment and Management: A good AIMS identifies all possible risks, analyses them for the cause and effect, evaluates them and has a proper plan for mitigation of these risks.

5. Practices: AIMS clearly defines the operational and maintenance prac-tices.

6. Reporting: AIMS provide com-munication channel both ways, so that the decisions taken and policy amendments are percolated seam-lessly down the line and at the same time information crucial to moni-toring of Asset Integrity is received at the top on regular basis. It also defines the type, frequency etc. of communication.

7. Feedbacks: AIMS provides a chan-nel for feedbacks based on opera-tional and maintenance experience for improving the Asset Integrity.

8. Auditing: Auditing is the main tool in the hand of the management to determine the level of compliance of the policies and decisions taken at the top level. AIMS determine the type and frequency of such audits.

9. Training: Most importantly the suc-cess of any AIMS is dependent on the human factor. Therefore AIMS provides means for identifying gaps in knowledge of the personnel and bridging of the gaps through train-ings.

ONGC’s Experience

Lastly, I would like to share with you how we in ONGC approached the is-sue of Asset Integrity.

The E&P business of ONGC is not only spread across the length and breadth of the country but is also pres-ent in a number of countries around the globe. In India alone we are operating more than five lakh sq. Km of PEL and twenty four thousand sq. Km ML. Over the years ONGC has developed massive infrastructure to carry out its E&P business. For our domestic oper-ations, we are operating about 28 Seis-mic Crews, 77 Drilling Rigs, 57 Work-over Rigs, 108 Well Stimulation Units, 3 massive VAP plants, over 22,000 Km of pipeline, 224 Onshore Installations, about 200 Offshore Platforms, 7 Multi Support Vessels (MSV) and about 58 supply vessels( OSV + PSV). ONGC has an inventory of about 12000 wells. We are producing about 24.419 MMT and 23.095 BCM annually of oil and gas respectively from about 150 giant, medium and small fields located both onland and offshore. Each year we drill over 350 wells and take-up about 1500 workover jobs. In addition to this numerous well stimulation jobs are also being carried out. I mention these figures just to give you an idea of the scale of our operation comprising both onshore and offshore areas.


Like all E&P companies ONGC has to manage a complex portfolio of risk. Stake involved are high in terms of human life, environment management and commercial viability of projects. A few hours of shut down at any of our platform would cause loss of revenue running into crores of rupees, any ma-jor incident is potentially a grave risk for the people working there and also those present in the vicinity. Rupture in any of our trunk-lines carrying mas-sive quantities of crude oil and gas would have a catastrophic impact on the environment of the region. There-fore practice of AIMS for a company like ONGC is a must. However, this was not the case till a few years ago.

In the early part of this decade, ONGC management realized that there was a dip in efficiency and an increase in number of incidents. Some of these like the condensate fire in Uran Plant and the riser rupture of BUT (Bom-bay Uran Trunk) were few examples. Though the company had been com-plying with the safety regulations of the regulatory bodies but it failed to get insurance cover for its offshore op-erations in 2002. Our Offshore proper-ties were without insurance cover for 42 days. This was a grave situation indeed and ONGC management was shaken to say the least.

In order to overcome this grave situ-ation ONGC management carried out internal assessment to take a stock of the situation and rectify the shortcom-ings. Findings of the assessment were an eye opener.

Some of the findings are as under:

1. Over the last 20 years, especially in the 80’s and 90’s, ONGC had been growing at a faster pace, the management’s focus was more on expansion, creation and growth and somewhere along the line focus from the existing facilities/ installa-tion had shifted. Whereas, the ven-erability of existing facilities had increased on account of aging and required greater attention in terms of maintenance and replacement.

2. Annual maintenance shutdowns were being postponed and short-ened in order to achieve ever in-creasing targets.

3. Lack of uniform maintenance and replacement policies and practices.

4. Overall approach of the workforce towards safety and maintenance was reactive rather than being pro-active and predictive.

5. Operations and maintenance manu-als had not been updated for a very long period and on top of it were not available at a number of loca-tions.

6. Production operation was one of the worst affected areas as a result of HR transfer policy. Knowledge gap had been created because the transfers had been done without mapping the knowledge/ skills and experience of the personnel.

7. Information on inventory, procure-ment, performance, safety param-eters, maintenance was fragmented and secondly it was available on different platforms which were not compatible to one another, making consolidation and analysis difficult.

8. Archaic system of reporting of safe-ty issues through monthly reports.

9. Lastly the role and importance of Safety Department had been mar-ginalized. It was highly under-staffed and over stretched. Safety personnel were busy in the day to day activity of work permits etc. and had little time to assess and improve safety requirements from time to time.

In light of the above findings ONGC management undertook a campaign to improve Asset Integrity by addressing the finding/ issues that were undermin-ing the Asset Integrity.

As a first step towards improving As-set Integrity, Safety department was rechristened as HSE division headed by ED level officer at the corporate level. The division was strengthened by posting of more competent person-nel. 250 officers were trained in pro-gramme for Internal auditors of QHSE management system. ONGC launched a drive to have all operations/installa-tions are certified for quality, occupa-tional health, safety and environment management system based on ISO 9001 for quality, OHSAS 18001 for occupational health and safety and ISO 14001 for environment in the year 2004-05. Surveillance audit for QHSE certification were conducted in 2005-06 and all our operations/installations have successfully sustained the QHSE surveillance audit and same is also sustained today.

An interactive HSE website has been developed and linked to ongcreports.net through ONGC Intranet. This website contains standards, accident reports, safety alerts and all other rel-evant information on HSE for the ben-efit of all ONGC employees. This has resulted in developing the awareness of all employees in the field of HSE. Further to demonstrate its commit-ment and seriousness towards HSE is-sues, HSE review was carried out in all senior management meetings. All our meetings including Board meetings are started with Safety briefings/safety snapshots in order to send a message down the line that adherence of safety in our operations is first priority.


Mr. Hazarika is a Ist class graduate in mechanical engineering from Assam Engineering College, Guwahati. He joined ONGC as Graduate Trainee in 1976. His first assignment was as Driller(Cementing) in Assam. He remained in Assam upto 1989 at various important positions with increasing complex responsibilities. He was transferred to Madras (now Chennai) and given the responsibility of In-charge-Cementing Services for entire ONGC. Due to his meritorious work, he was declared Drilling Engineer of the year 1990. He was transferred to Mumbai in 1995. During the tenure at Mumbai, he was declared as Head of Multi-disciplinary team (MDT) to work on prestigious project of Mumbai high redevelopment projects (North & South). Due to his excellent contribution in Drilling Services he was elevated to the position of Head of Well Services Mumbai in April 2002. Mr. Hazarika rose to the position of Executive Director and Chief-Well Services from January 2003, establishing his leadership

and people managing abilities. Mr. Hazarika was selected by Govt. of India to the position of Director (Onshore) in September 2004 at Delhi where he is presently looking after all the onshore operations of ONGC spread over the entire country. There are 7 Onshore Assets in India. Out of which 6 Assets are producing oil with associated gas and one Asset is producing only gas. Total Onshore oil production is about 8 mmt/year and gas about 6 billion m3/year. ONGC is also pursuing production of CBM gas from unminable coal seams. ONGC has got 9 CBM blocks in Onshore areas and exploration and production of CBM gas in 3 blocks is under progress. For exploiting CBM gas, ONGC is engaging state of art technology of drilling horizontal wells through various coal seams to produce maximum amount of gas from each well. ONGC has a plan to produce 1240.95 mmscm of CBM gas during XI plan (2007-2012).

Mr. Hazarika is presently also holding the responsibility as Director (Incharge), Health, Safety & Environment of ONGC’s operations. In addition, he is also heading the Carbon Management Group (CMG) of ONGC pursuing different CDM projects through reduction of GHG emissions mainly CO2 & Methane. Under his leadership already 5 projects have been successfully registered in UNFCCC and another 3 projects are in various stages of registration.

Mr. Hazarika has been entrusted with the responsibility of Chairman, ONGC Teri Biotech Limited (OTBL) by ONGC Board. Mr. Hazarika is a mem-ber of Governing Council of Petroleum Federation of India (Petro-Fed) and also elected as Chairperson of SPE Chapter of Delhi for 2007. He is also a member of High Level Advisory Council of Petroleum Technology International, India for 2010.

He has also been elected to the post of President of the Governing Council of Global Compact Network for the period 2011-13. Shri A K Hazarika, was holding the additional charge of CMD, ONGC Group of Companies from 1.2.2011 to 3.10.2011.

A K Hazarika

Installations/ platforms/pipelines were prioritized for revamping up-gradation & replacement and the jobs are in progress both in offshore & onshore areas. Similarly, a number of drilling rigs were also refurbished and upgrad-ed to improve their performance and reliability. Fleet of Work-over rigs was strengthened by induction of new rigs.

School of Maintenance Practices was setup at Vadodra to take care mainte-nance policy, practice and training needs. This helped us in formulating and putting in place maintenance and replacement policy for various equipments, pipeline etc and bridging the knowledge gap of personnel in maintenance.

P&IDs and operation manuals were revisited and updated by incorporating the modification and operational prac-tices that had been changed since it was last updated and were made avail-able at the location.

To overcome the issue of fragmenta-tion of information, Information Con-solidation for Efficiency (ICE) Project

on SAP R3 platform was rolled out across the company and various mod-ules of Finance, HR, MM, Production, Drilling, Safety were incorporated into it. Thereby, facilitating almost real time availability of various informa-tion needed by senior management for monitoring and taking decisions.

Apart from outside audits carried out by OISD, in-house technical audit, process audit, energy audit and safety audit teams have been strengthened and their recommendations are taken seriously and implemented.

Safety and Asset Integrity parameters were included in Key Performance In-dicators (KPIs) of senior executives. Preference was given to ‘Leading In-dicators’ over ‘Lagging Indicators’ in order to assess the health of the safe-guards and controls.

The measures listed above have helped us in greatly improving the integrity of our Assets. We have moved on from reactive approach to preventive and predictive approach. Management has

been successful in inculcating HSE culture within the organization. Ef-ficiencies have improved and break-downs have been reduced consider-ably. Despite huge losses from the deep water blowout incident at GOM and Japanese crisis, due to earthquake followed by Tsunami etc. and uncer-tainty in the international insurance market, Insurance cover premium of ONGC has been coming down year to year. This in itself is a testimony of our safety first culture and stress on Asset Integrity. Insurance cover premium for Offshore Installations has come down from US$ 46.7 million in 2006-07 to US$ 27.7 million for the year 2011-12, even though our Asset value is increas-ing every year.

Conclusion

At the end it would be appropriate to say that as organizations grow more complex in operation and more global in scope, assets’ integrity becomes all the more important and key to success & sustainable growth.


Introduction

Production over the years has diminished reservoir pressure to near hydrostatic to sub-hydrostatic. Pressure depletion in shales (above pay sands or associated with pay sands) is not the usual occurrence as nothing is being produced from shale. In the past, pay zones were having pressures more than hydrostatic, hence unknowingly, shales were stabilized with higher mud weight with least effect on productivity of oil well. In near hydrostatic/ sub hydrostatic scenario, it is becoming more or less a requirement to stabilize shale with low mud weight to cause minimum damage to reservoir.

A case in point is the requirement for formulation of mud system to drill large sections of shale and reservoir alterna-tions without isolation by casing in Southern field of ONGC. The required mud weight suggested by asset is ~1.05 in or-der to minimize pay zone damage.

Mitigation of shale problems has led to development of high performance water base fluids based on rock- fluid interac-tion principles. Different high performance water base mud system used in ONGC viz KCl-PHPA, KCl-PHPA-Polyol has resulted into stabilizing of shales with reduced mud weight. However now emphasis is on to reduce mud weight further to meet the current requirement. This calls for under-standing applicability of ‘mud weight window’, criteria for selection of ‘mud weight’ and effect of depletion on reser-voir rock and its adjacent formation.

Mud weight Selection

Selection of mud weight for pressure control requires knowl-edge of :

• Pore Pressure Gradient• Collapse gradient• Fracture gradientThese gradients can be determined from nearby wells or measured while drilling. Pore pressure and collapse gradient define the lower limit of mud weight while Fracture gradient define the upper limit of mud weight. Mud weight should be kept as low as is safe, to reduce cost.

Pore Pressure Gradient: It is the density of pore fluid per foot of depth and is expressed as equivalent mud weight, ppg or psi/ ft. It is determined from density logs, or from VSP data. Mud weight is increased to confine pore pressure and there-fore kick and subsequent blow out.

Mud weight > Pore pressure gradient = Controlled Mud weight < Pore pressure gradient = Kick is taken

Collapse Gradient: It is the collapse resistance of the bore-hole per foot of depth and is expressed as equivalent mud weight, ppg or psi/ ft.

Mud weight > Collapse gradient = Borehole wall supported-Mud weight < Collapse gradient = Borehole wall collapses

Challenges associated with drilling hydrostatic/ sub hydrostatic reservoirFluid engineering aspect

S DuttaED-Head-IDT, ONGC

Asset Reliability

Borehole instability can lead to

• Borehole collapse• Trapped tools• Most logging operations affected• Reduce casing support• Blocked off holesFracture Gradient: It is the fracture resistance of the borehole per foot of depth. It is determined by performing a leak off test on the borehole. Mud is slowly pumped into the open borehole and measuring the pressure increase. When the increase becomes non linear, the borehole has started to fail. This in-dicates fracture pressure at that point. Fracture gradient is expressed in equiv-alent mud weight, ppg or psi/ ft.

Mud weight < Fracture gradient = Safe borehole

Mud weight > Fracture gradient = Fractured borehole

Fractured boreholes can lead to

• Underground blowout • Lost circulationCollapse and Fracture gradients de-pend on formation rock properties, in-situ stresses, pore pressure and well bore trajectory.

Mud weight window

The boundary between Collapse pres-

sure/ Pore pressure and Fracture pres-sure is called the mud weight window. It should be in excess of former and lesser than the latter. There are sev-eral approaches for optimizing mud weight while drilling. One approach that attempts to optimize mud weight such that hoop stress is zero, is the me-dian line principle proposed by Aad-noy. This principle suggests that mud weight should be half way between the pore pressure and the fracture gradient to bring the hoop stress to zero.

There may be a temptation to keep mud weight as low as possible in order to maximize penetration rate. Unfortu-nately this often leads to hole enlarge-ment and lost time due to tight hole problems. The median line approach sacrifices penetration rate early on in the well but makes for it by minimizing hole problems. Even with an approach like the median line principle, the mud weight can only be optimized for the hole at one depth. An optimum mud weight for the hole at one depth will be too high for the well at shallower depth and too low for deeper depth. This means optimum mud weight window for a small section of the open hole can be had. The best course of action is to optimize the mud weight at the drill-ing depth and raise mud weight as re-quired, but never reduce it.

Depleted Reservoir Effects

Depletion of a zone has two major ef-fects

→ The Horizontal stresses drops→ The effective stresses rise

• This results in→ Drop in pore pressure in the de-

pleted zone→ Increase in confining stress i.e.

stronger rock→ The reservoir shrinks because of

drop in pore pressure→ Increase in horizontal stresses

above and below the zone→ Effects on vertical stress are neg-

ligible→ Pore pressure can be expected to

be low→ In some cases the reservoir en-

ters a condition of shear failure (or collapse)

→ There may also be issues of cas-ing shear

→ Free gas development in the res-ervoir

• Consequences→ Slower drilling because rock is

tougher→ Lost circulation and Blow out

risks go up substantially→ More casing strings and LCM

squeezes→ Most serious in HTHP wells,

Multiple zonesDepleted reservoirs exhibit lower pore pressure and horizontal stress mag-nitudes than does the overlying shale formation. Drilling through depleted reservoirs can cause lost circulation and drilling induced well bore insta-bility. Though the overburden stress is expected to increase with depth, both horizontal stresses are significantly smaller in depleted sand than the over-burden shale. However both the hori-zontal stress magnitudes increase again in the shale below the depleted sand or in shale/ sand alternations i.e. in multiple zones. Such rapid variations in horizontal stress magnitudes cause large fluctuations in safe mud weight window.

Discussions

The maintenance of wellbore stability is one of the most critical consider-ations

in any drilling operation. An unstable wellbore will reduce drilling perfor-


mance, result in drilling and tripping difficulties and in the worst case could result in the loss of the hole through borehole collapse. Wellbore instability can occur as a result of:

• Chemical effects,• Mechanical effects,• Combination of both.Chemical effects are related to elec-trochemical interactions between mud and formation being drilled. The prob-lems may result due to · Inappropriate mud type being used or · Inadequate inhibition being given to mud system.

Mechanical effects, In simple terms, are usually related to: Inadequate mud weight (too high or too low and inap-propriate drilling practices (rate of pen-etration, vibration effects, torque and drag, poor practices, and frequency of trips).

Chemical Effects; Mud Design Perspective

Based on CST and Dispersibility stud-ies, following fluids were found to be best suitable for providing optimal in-hibition and mitigating shale problems in respect of ‘Chemical effect perspec-tive’ for the shales of the area.

• 6 cp. PBS + 5% KCl + 0.2 % XCP + 0.4% PHPA + 0.6% PAC (L) + 0.4 % PAC ® + 2% SA + 2% Polyol

• 6 cp. PBS + 2% Amine + 0.2 % XCP + 0.4% PHPA + 0.6% PAC (L) + 0.4 % PAC ® + 2% SA + 2% Polyol

• 10 cp. PBS + 1% CATIONICS-O+ 2% PGS + 2% SA

Mechanical Effects; Mud Weight Perspective

Objective of the present study is to for-mulate very low weight (close to hy-drostatic ~1.05) drilling fluid system for drilling large sections of shale and reservoir sand alternations.

As per GTO, expected formation pres-sure is Hydrostatic + 5% in the interval 1150-1800 m. This interval covers the shale and reservoir sands.

Mud weight corresponding to this in-terval as per GTO is 1.10-1.22, which is on higher side vis-s-vis expected for-mation pressure.

Why is it so? As pointed out earlier, Mud weight selection is based on fol-lowing:

• Pore pressure • Collapse pressure• Fracture pressurePore pressure data are given in the GTO (expected formation pressure) and Frac-ture pressure data is obtained through LOT. Collapse pressure data is not pro-vided in the GTO. Pore pressure is due to fluid in the pore and Collapse pres-sure is due to solids in shale matrix.

Generally sediment at a depth has to support the weight of the sediments above it. The total stress (S) imposed by the overburden (solids+water) is given by the equation: S= ρb x Z

Where ρb is the bulk density of sedi-ments and Z is the depth.

Mud weight should be maintained in excess of Pore pressure/ Collapse pres-sure and less than fracture pressure.

But once sediment has been compacted sufficiently and establishes grain to grain contact, the overburden load is carried in-dependently by the solid matrix and fluid in the pores separately, so that: S= σ + Pf

Where σ is Effective stress (or inter-granular stress or matrix stress) and Pf

Is pore pressure. Deformation and strength of a rock is dependent on the ef-fective stress and is independent of pore pressure. Collapse of the rock is related to effective stress. If mud weight is not maintained above the effective stress the rock will fail under compression due to overburden at that depth. Therefore mud weight has to play two roles: a) to con-trol pore pressure to prevent fluid influx as well as b) to control effective stress to prevent rock failure.

Hence as per given GTO, mud weight of 1.05 is sufficient to control pore pressure but may fail to check the effective stress. So keeping a mud weight in the range 1.10-1.22 is com-pletely justified in terms of control-ling pore pressure as well as effective stress. Incorporation of collapse pres-sure data in GTO would have solved the issue once for all.

Shale and Sand alternations

Now coming to the scenario of shale sand alternations. There will be changes in stresses in shale sand al-ternations. It would be different for shale falling adjacent to sands. As has been pointed earlier, Depleted reser-voirs exhibit lower pore pressure and horizontal stress magnitudes than does the overlying shale formation. Drilling through depleted reservoirs can cause lost circulation and drilling induced well bore instability. Though the overburden stress is expected to increase with depth, both horizontal stresses are significantly smaller in depleted sand than the overburden shale. However both the horizontal stress magnitudes increase again in the shale below the depleted sand or in shale/ sand alternations i.e. in multiple zones. Such rapid variations in horizontal stress magnitudes cause large fluctuations in safe mud weight window.

In near hydrostatic/ sub hydrostatic scenario impact of collapse pressure becomes all the more important. In an effort to minimize pay zone dam-age the decrease in mud weight may bypass collapse pressure requirement of adjacent formation. As a result of which borehole will fail under com-pression.

The designed mud systems will defi-nitely push mud weight requirement to lower bound side of mud weight window, but care is to be taken that it may not ignore collapse pressure requirement. Determination of col-lapse pressure is done through geo-mechanics studies or through logs. In the absence of collapse pressure data, a practical way in field is to see the incidence of caving when the low mud weight is used. If it occurs then gradu-al increase in mud weight is made till the caving is stopped.

Review of Casing Policy

In such scenario, drilling long interval of shale and sand alternations without any isolation casing is not possible, for which review of casing policy is required. Higher mud weight to con-trol shale may damage underneath near hydrostatic/ sub-hydrostatic res-


ervoir. Using mud weight required for drilling reservoir may destabilize the shale. Therefore additional casing is required to be lowered up to the top of reservoir and then reservoir may be drilled with desired mud weight.

Conclusions

• Following mud systems may be used to mitigate hydrational stress: 1. 6 cp. PBS + 5% KCl + 0.2 %

XCP + 0.4% PHPA + 0.6% PAC (L) + 0.4 % PAC ® + 2% SA + 2% Polyol

2. 6 cp. PBS + 2% Amine + 0.2 % XCP + 0.4% PHPA + 0.6% PAC (L) + 0.4 % PAC ® + 2% SA + 2% Polyol

3. 10 cp. PBS + 1% CATIONICS-O+ 2% PGS + 2% SA

• Not feasible to drill with low mud

weight until collapse pressure/ pore pressure are known.

• Collapse pressure along with Pore pressure may be considered for se-lecting lower bound mud weight and must be displayed in GTO.

• Additional casing may be lowered up to the top of reservoir and then reservoir may be drilled with de-sired mud weight.

• Geomechanics study of the area will be extremely useful for deciding ‘Mud weight window’ for delinea-tion of Lower bound mud weight and Upper bound mud weight.

• Efficient solid control equipment may be used.

References

1. Composition and properties of oil well drilling fluids’, fourth edition,-

Gray and Darley, Page 338 (Chapter on Hole stability).

2. ‘Drilling and Drilling fluids’- Chill-ingarian and Vorabutr, Page 218-219.

3. “Wellbore Stability and Formation Damage Study: A Collaborative Research Project” : School of Petro-leum Engineering, UNSW, Sydney and IDT, Dehradun, December 2008.

4. Safe mud weight window predic-tor- Instantaneous and Post analysis software, SPE Paper no 36097 by G. Hareland et al; 1996.

5. Estimation of Near-Wellbore Alter-ation and Formation Stress Param-eters From Borehole Sonic Data, SPE Paper no 95841-PA by Bikash Sinha et al; 2008

6. Physicochemical stabilization of shale, SPE paper no 37263 by Eric van Oort.

Mr. S.Dutta, a graduate in Mechanical Engineering from Regional Institute of Technology, Jamshedpur, India, joined Oil & Natural Gas Commission (ONGC) in 1975 as a Graduate Engineer and presently holding the post of Executive Director of the company. He has 36 years of experience in oil industry including a decade in offshore. During his service in ONGC, He was given assignment as in-charge Cementing and subsequently he has headed as Regional in-charge Cementing Services, Head Drilling Business Group & Head Corporate Inventory Management in differ-ent regions and work centers of the company. Presently he is heading Institute of Drilling Technology at Dehradun (India), the premier R&D institute of the company. During his early tenure in ONGC, He has been credited with the introduction of many innovative cementing technologies in directional wells of offshore & onshore wells with bare foot completion without damaging the formation. In the capacity of Head Drilling Services he has taken the achievements

of drilling services to new heights wherever he was posted. He has introduced the iMac – codification system in SAP and has liquidated inventory considerably which has saved huge money for the company. Mr Dutta is a member of SPE and presently he is holding the position of Section Chair-person of SPE North India Section.

S Dutta

CorrigendumIn our last issue of Journal of Petrotech, in advertly the photograph & Bio-data of Mr R K Mishra was printed alongwith Mr P K Bhowmick whereas it should have been Mr Ratan Kumar Mishra alongwith Mr P K Bhowmick for the article:“India’s Energy Security - Natural Gas Self Sufficiency & Shale Gas Resources of Indian Sedimentary Basins”

Mr. Ratan Kumar Mishra is engaged in petroleum exploration activities for more than two decades with ONGC. He is associated with R&D activities of Shale gas and Gas Hydrate projects of ONGC.After completing his Masters in Geology, he earned his Executive Masters in International Business from Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT), New Delhi, Industry assignments in techno-commercial analysis, starategic planning and feasibility of overseas crude oil exploration projecs stimulated his interest in research in global business and he completed his PHD in Management from Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, India His dissertation examined the Crude oil security issues of India and he has made an attempt to develop a model and methodology for globalization strategy for Indian crude oil security. His research has been published in the Journal of Applied Statistics (Taylor & Francis Group). He was invited to present a paper “Application of ACE algorithm in investment decision in selection of overseas exploration opportunities” in the 33rd International Geological Congress held at Oslo, Norway during 06-08.2008 to 14.08.2008 He is Certified Petroleum Man-

ger from Indian School of Petroleum, India. His area of interest lies in Shale Gas Exploration, Numerical Modelling, Petroleum Economics etc. he is a member of Society of Petroleum Engineer (SPE)


Cathodic Protection & its Monitoring

K. K. Jha , Girish KumarIOCL Panipat Refinery

Introduction

This article describes the basic principles of corrosion, ca-thodic protection, the areas of use, and the general factors to be considered in the choice and design of a system. Different kind of cathodic protection techniques, its advantages and disadvantages have also cover in this article. It gives a basic introduction and simple technical data on cathodic protec-tion and also describes installation, maintenance and testing scheme for impressed current cathodic protection installed for the mounded bullets in PNC.

Corrosion and Cathodic Protection

Nature has given each metallic substance with a certain natu-ral energy level or potential. When two metals having differ-ent energy levels or potentials are coupled together, current will flow. The direction of positive current flow will be from the metal with the more negative potential through the soil to that which is more positive. Corrosion will occur at the point where positive current leaves the metal surface. Cathodic protection is an electrical method of preventing corrosion on metallic structures which are in electrolytes such as soil or water. It has had widespread application on underground pipelines, and ever increasing use as the most effective cor-rosion control method for numerous other underground and underwater structures such as lead cables, water storage tanks, lock gates and dams, steel pilings, Underground stor-age tanks, well casings, ship hulls and interiors, water treat-ment equipment, trash racks and screens. It is a scientific method which combats corrosion by use of the same laws which cause the corrosion process.

Principles of Cathodic Protection

Metal that has been extracted from its primary ore (metal oxides or other free radicals) has a natural tendency to revert to that state under the action of oxygen and water. This action is called corrosion and the most common example is the rusting of steel.

Corrosion is an electro-chemical process that involves the passage of electrical currents on a micro or macro scale. The change from the metallic to the combined form occurs by an “anodic” reaction:

M → M+ + e-

(Metal) (Soluble salt) (Electron)

A common example is:

Fe → Fe++ + 2e-

This reaction produces free electrons, which pass within the metal to another site on the metal surface (the cathode), where it is consumed by the cathodic reaction. In acid solu-tions the cathodic reaction is:

2H+ + 2e- → H2

(Hydrogen ions in solution) (Gas)

In neutral solutions the cathodic reaction involves the con-sumption of oxygen dissolved in the solution:

O2 + 2H2O + 4e- → 4OH-

(Alkali)

Corrosion thus occurs at the anode but not at the cathode (Unless the metal of the cathode is attacked by alkali)

The anode and cathode in a corrosion process may be on two different metals connected together forming a bimetallic cou-ple, or, as with rusting of steel, they may be close together on the same metal surface. This corrosion process is initially caused by: Differerence in natural potential in galvanic (bime-tallic) couples. Metallurgical variations in the state of the met-al at different points on the surface, Local differences in the

Asset Reliability

environment, such as variations in the supply of oxygen at the surface (oxygen rich areas become the cathode and oxy-gen depleted areas become the anode).

The principle of cathodic protection is in connecting an external anode to the metal to be protected and the passing of an electrical D.C current so that all areas of the metal surface become cathodic and therefore do not corrode. The external anode may be a galvanic anode, where the current is a result of the potential dif-ference between the two metals, or it may be an impressed current anode, where the current is impressed from an external dc power source. In electro-chemical terms, the electrical potential between the metal and the electrolyte solution with which it is in contact is made more negative, by the supply of negative charged elec-trons, to a value at which the corroding (anodic) reactions are stifled and only cathodic reactions can take place. In the discussion that follows it is assumed that the metal to be protected is carbon steel, which is the most common material used in construction. The cathodic protection of reinforcing carbon steel in reinforced concrete structures can be applied in a similar manner.

Cathodic protection can be achieved in two ways:

- by the use of galvanic (sacrificial) an-odes, or

- by “impressed” current. Galvanic anode systems employ reac-tive metals as auxiliary anodes that are

directly electrically connected to the steel to be protected. The difference in natural potentials between the anode and the steel, as indicated by their rela-tive positions in the electro-chemical series, causes a positive current to flow in the electrolyte, from the anode to the steel. Thus, the whole surface of the steel becomes more negatively charged and becomes the cathode. The metals commonly used, as sacrificial anodes are aluminium, zinc and magnesium. These metals are alloyed to improve the long-term performance and disso-lution characteristics. Impressed-cur-rent systems employ inert (zero or low dissolution) anodes and use an external source of dc power (rectified ac) to im-press a current from an external anode onto the cathode surface.

Sacrificial Anode (Galvanic) Type

Sacrificial-anode-type cathodic protec-tion systems provide cathodic current by galvanic corrosion. The current is gener-ated by metallically connecting the struc-ture to be protected to a metal/alloy that is electrochemically more active than the material to be protected. Both the struc-ture and the anode must be in contact with the electrolyte. Current discharges from the expendable anode through the electrolyte and onto the structure to be protected. The anode corrodes in the pro-cess of providing protection to the struc-ture. The basic components of a single, sacrificial-anode-type cathodic protec-tion installation are the structure to be protected, the anode, and the means of connecting the structure to the anode.

The cathodic current generated by the sacrificial anode depends on the inher-ent potential between the anode and the structure to be protected. Theoretically, any metal or alloy more electrochemi-cally active than another would be capa-ble of cathodically protecting the more noble material. In practice, only zinc and alloys of magnesium are used for the protection of steel in soils. Although zinc has a higher current output effi-ciency, most sacrificial anodes installed for the protection of underground steel structures are fabricated from magne-sium alloys because magnesium alloys provide a higher driving potential.

Sacrificial-anode-type cathodic protection systems have a number of advantages:• No external power is required• No regulation is required• Easy to install• Minimum of cathodic interference

problems• Anodes can be readily added• Minimum of maintenance required• Uniform distribution of current• Minimum right-of-way/easement

costs• Efficient use of protective current• Installation can be inexpensive if in-

stalled at time of construction

Sacrificial-anode-type systems also have disadvantages that limit their application:• Limited driving potential• Lower/limited current output• Poorly coated structures may re-

quire many anodes• Can be ineffective in high-resistivi-

ty environments• Installation can be expensive if in-

stalled after construction• Require periodic inspection and

maintenance• Require external power, resulting in

monthly power costs• Overprotection can cause coating

damage Impressed Current Type

Impressed-current-type cathodic pro-tection systems provide cathodic cur-rent from an external power source. A direct current (DC) power source forc-es current to discharge from expend-able anodes through the electrolyte and onto the structure to be protected. Although the current is not generated by the corrosion of a sacrificial metal/

Figure 1. Corrosion cell / Bimetallic corrosion


alloy, the energized materials used for the auxiliary anodes do corrode.

The basic components of an impressed-current-type cathodic protection system are the structure to be protected, a DC power source, a group of auxiliary anodes (ground bed or anode bed), and insulated lead wires connecting the structure to be protected to the negative terminal of the power source and the ground bed to the positive terminal of the power source.

The DC power source is usually a rec-tifier, although current also can be ob-tained using engine-driven generators, batteries, solar cells, fuel cells, wind-powered generators, and thermoelec-tric generators. High-silicon chromium bearing cast iron anodes and ceramic-coated anodes are commonly used materials for auxiliary anodes when impressed-current-type cathodic protec-tion systems are used to mitigate corro-sion on underground steel structures.

Impressed-current-type cathodic protection systems have a number of advantages:• Can be designed for a wide range of

voltage and current• High ampere-year output is avail-

able from single ground bed• Large areas can be protected by sin-

gle installation• Variable voltage and current output• Applicable in high-resistivity envi-

ronments• Effective in protecting uncoated and

poorly coated structures Impressed-current-type systems also have disadvantages which limit their application:• Can cause cathodic interference

problems• Are subject to power failure and

vandalism• Have right-of-way restrictions Present System at Panipat Naphtha Cracker

There are total 6nos of mounded bullet vessels having 7m dia x 53m TL to TL length-5 nos & 4m dia x 14m TL to TL length 1 no with hemispherical ends in the offsite area of PNC.

Impressed current type of cathodic pro-tection system is provided for all 6nos

of mounded bullets.

Current density: The protective cur-rent density considered for design in 25mA/sq M for bare vessel and 2.5mA for polyurethane coating.

Anode type: Conductive polymer an-ode Anodeflex-1500-01 is used as an-ode material to cater for service of 30 years design life. The anodeflex has an inner copper conductor core of 6 AWG size insulated with conductive poly-mer. The bare anode diameter is 13mm and is prepacked in coke backfill of 1.1 kg/m with final diameter of 35mm. The current density of the anodeflex is 40mA/m for the design life of 30 years.

Anode Backfill material: The anode-flex is prepacked in calcined petroleum coke breeze with more than 99% car-bon content. The weight of the coke is 1.1kg per meter length. The overall prepacked dimension is 35mm.

Anodeflex system: Anodeflex is a long line, flexible conductive poly-mer anode. The tough, flexible poly-mer seals the copper conductor from chemical attack yet allows the current to pass from the conductor to the soil all along its length. The anode cable is packed with a high performance coke breeze. When energized, the conduc-tive polymer cable provides current to the coke breeze. The electrochemical anode reaction occurs within the coke breeze, sustaining a homogeneous cur-rent to the structure.

Scheme for the CP system: The ano-deflex string total 46 nos (42nos of 55 meter length & 4nos of 16 meter length)

common for six mounded storage ves-sel is fed from one Transfer Rectifier unit through two anode junction boxes. One positive header cable from the TR unit & 46 anode lead cables (one from each string) are terminated in the AJB. Another TR unit (standby) is connected in parallel to the main TR unit so that one TR unit is in operation and other in standby mode. The power supply to these TR units is drawn from the nearest substation through one no power distri-bution board. The return current from each vessel flows through cathode junc-tion box(CJB). The CJB is connected to the negative terminal of the TR unit. The monitoring of the CP system is be-ing done by installation of reference cell in the vicinity of the mounded vessel. The reference cables and the measure-ment cables from each vessels is routed through CJB to a single monitoring box (MJB) having a provision of measure-ment of vessel to soil potential.

CP system components: The CP sys-tem consist of 2nos of Transfer recti-fier Unit(one standby), 6nos of Anode junction box(AJB), 6nos of cathode junction box(CJB), 1no of measure-ment box(MJB), 88 nos of reference cell (16nos per vessel for 7m dia vessel and 8 nos for 4m dia vessel), set of ano-deflex string, set of connecting cables.

Continuity Testing of Impressed Current Systems

All protected components of the UST system must be electrically continuous in an impressed current cathodic protec-tion system Failure to establish continu-ity in an impressed current system can result in accelerated corrosion of the

Figure2. Typical Anodeflex 1500-01


electrically isolated components. All bonds shall be carefully checked when evaluating an impressed current sys-tem as these are of critical importance. Commonly, tanks are bonded into the negative circuit by attachment to the tank vent lines above ground. Because of this, it is easy for the integrity of the bonds to be compromised. It is equally important to ensure that the positive lead wire(s) have continuity. Any break in the insulation or dielectric coating of the positive circuit will allow current to discharge from the break and cause rap-id corrosion failure of the wire. This is why it is absolutely critical that all bur-ied positive circuit splices are properly coated and insulated.

CP System monitoring in PNC: As per Reliability improvement report by refin-ery HO TR unit parameter and test cum anode junction box parameters are being monitored on monthly basis. Reference electrode parameter and cathode junc-tion box parameter are being tested quar-terly. TR unit maintenance and earthing monitoring is being done once in every six months. Yearly isolation monitoring is being done as per the scheme.

CONCLUSION: Cathodic protec-tion is a highly adaptable and effec-tive means of preventing corrosion on a variety of underground or underwa-ter structures. There are basically two types of systems: namely, galvanic and impressed current. Each has character-

istics which make it more adaptable' under given circumstances. Cathodic protection designs can differ consider-ably depending upon the coating, the configuration of the structure, the en-vironment and the presence of neigh-boring structures. When a system is designed, installed and maintained properly, cathodic protection is one of the most effective and economical methods of preventing corrosion.

Industry Codes/Standards

• National Association of Corrosion Engineers (NACE International) RP0285-2002 “Corrosion

• Control of Underground Storage Tank Systems by Cathodic Protection”.

• Petroleum Equipment Institute (PEI) RP 100-2000 “Recommended Practices for Installation of Under-ground Liquid Storage Systems”.

• Steel Tank Institute (STI) R892-91 “Recommended Practice for Corro-sion Protection of Underground Pip-ing Networks Associated with Liquid Storage and Dispensing Systems”.a) National Association of Corrosion

Engineers (NACE) Standard RP-01-69 (1983 Rev), Recommended Practice for Control of External Corrosion on Underground or Submerged Piping Systems.

b) NACE Standard RP-02-85, Con-trol of External Corrosion on Metallic Buried, Partially Bur-ied, or Submerged Liquid Stor-age Systems.

References

• Department of Defense MIL-HD-BK-1136 “Maintenance and Op-eration of Cathodic Protection Sys-tems”.

• Department of Defense MIL-HD-BK-1136/1 “Cathodic Protection Field Testing”.

Figure3. Anodeflex and reference electrode layout

Figure4. Connection scheme

Girish Kumar is a B.Tech (Metallurgical & materials engineering) from NIT Wa-rangal. He was involved in Naphtha cracker commis-sioning team. Presently, he is working as inspection En-gineer in Panipat Naphtha Cracker Complex.

Mr. K. K. Jha is a Metallurgical Engineer from B I T , Sindri . He is a member of NACE. He joined Indian Oil Corporation Limited in 1982 and worked at various locations in Refinery Division including foreign as-signment. He has got vast experience in Inspection along with plant reliability improvement Turnaround Inspection, Project Management etc. Presently, he is working as Chief Inspection Manager at Panipat Naphtha Cracker Complex.

Mr K K JhaMr Girish Kumar


In order to avoid unplanned shutdowns and linked loss, companies do their best to ensure mechanical integrity of its plant and equipments . However, recent inci-dents analysis and data demonstrates that mechanical

integrity (MI) problems are increasing despite deliberate at-tempts on the part of organizations to reduce them. Can this trend be reversed?

Despite similar investments, some mechanical integrity programs are significantly outperforming others, reporting safety and business benefits including improvements in as-set and plant availability, as well as reductions in rework, inspection man-hours, safety risks and unplanned events. Why are some mechanical integrity initiatives getting more bang for their buck?

People/ Process

While it is a common practice for organizations to look to technology to solve their reliability problems, highly functioning mechanical integrity programs are taking a much broader approach, giving equal attention to issues surrounding the management and alignment of their peo-ple and processes. “I spent the first 20 years of my ca-reer in the petrochemical industry thinking all you needed to improve asset performance was better technology,” says John Aller, Asset Optimization, LLC. But according to him, future competitiveness will require a new mind-set, one which addresses the human factors of asset man-agement as well as the technical, and uses work processes and technology to enable and institutionalize practices within their organizations.

Where people, processes and technology work in tandem, there is always a significant reduction in the unplanned events and improvement in asset reliability. “The pro-cesses that drive our assets, as well as the work processes used to accomplish these tasks, must be living and breath-ing, just like the people that use them,” says Jeff Dud-ley, Dow Chemical’s Director of Maintenance and Reli-ability. “Too often processes – work and manufacturing

– are established and then proclaimed as the way we do work, and before you know it the profits and margins that those processes initially created dry up. In many cases, dwindling profits and margins are because the innovation and flexibility offered by a dynamic learning environment were not built into or expected in the work processes, and the technology necessary to support the effort was insuf-ficient or absent.”

Human Factor

Asset performance management (APM) is not just about technology. It's also about people. Some experts say that the success of any improvement effort will be determined 90% by people, and 10% by technology. Regardless of the per-centages you place on one or the other, everyone can agree that people play a critical role in the success of any APM initiative and require attention. This fact is echoed by Jeff Dudley, Maintenance Technology Centre Director, The Dow Chemical Company in his paper Minimizing Unplanned Events through Leadership. Jeff quantifies the financial im-pact of poor leadership management - a 10% loss of revenue, or the equivalent of wasting 45 days of the year due to un-planned events.

Management system plays an important role in any asset performance, Often it has been observed that once sys-tems "go-live", anticipated reliability improvements are often disappointing. This disappointment is exacerbated by the fact that in general, so many things were done right during the implementation process. Why is it then, after doing so many things right, that a simple thing like enter-ing the correct code on a work request often doesn't get done?"

While there is usually a myriad of contributing factors why improvement initiatives run amuck, more often than not, a key contributor is a failure to integrate the user adoption into the development process. Six Sigma Black Belt, James Bumpas, CMRP, Project Director, Meridium, shares his ex-perience:

Mechanical Integrity: What the best programs share in common

Asset Reliability

"When improvement initiatives go wrong, we often look for reasons in all the wrong places, like the asset/equipment strategies and tactics we spend a lot of attention, time, and ef-fort on analyzing for improvements. Are these asset strategies important to the success of corporate improvement initiatives? Unequivocally. However, the root cause of most improvement failures usually has far less to do with the equipment strategies and much more to do with the people in our or-ganizations."

Its very important to identify and solve human-caused failures enabling you to better manage the people, who manage your technology. We must, therefore, focus on resource effectiveness and seize back the 10% profit which is lost due to unplanned events

Technology

At some point, the implementation of technology will be necessary to achieve desired results. For Marathon Oil, mechanical integrity is a central tenet of their reliability initiative. Since good MI decisions are based on comparisons between original and current equipment design data and equipment histories, it is essential to have accurate data. Originally, Mara-thon’s equipment data was stored in many different locations which could lead to poor decisions because of data inconsistencies and the fact that data was not readily ‘visible.’ This prob-lem was solved with technology which acts as a central repository for all of Marathon’s MI and other equipment reliability records.

Inspection management technology also plays a major role in the com-pany’s inspection activities support-ing the quality assurance of new, repair, refurbished and condition as-sessment equipment. The technology also provides a historical profile of equipment condition, capturing text and graphic numeric data to support equipment analysis supporting ratio-nale for future inspection activities.

Most of Indian oil companies having implements ERP solutions, this should be easier for them.

How to Improve MI benefits and return-on-investment

1. Assess the current status of your people, processes and technology. Find out if your people are properly trained, if you have the adequate resources and work processes from start to finish to support the effort, and if your existing technology will be able to adequately integrate, manage and evergreen your work processes.

2. Create a dynamic learning envi-ronment. Offer multiple options to capture and share informa-tion and best practices including classroom training, e-learning, web-casts, communities of practice, so-cial networking, seminars, and con-ferences. Training and retraining is the key to creating knowledge people in organisation, which is the greatest success factor of any asset reliability programme.

3. Outsource routine and non-core work and Create Dynamic part-nership with the outsourced team: it will not only help reduce cost of M&I, but also spare time for your knowledge people to spend more time on innovation and creative work, and ensure better supervision by them, when they do not have to spend time on mundane like OT and absenteeism etc.

4. Quantify value. Quantify current

and new work process value, as well as technology return-on-investment.

5. Create Collaborative Programmes for Value creation: It is posssible to create a multi refinery, multi loca-tion collaborative teams, where the knowledge could be shared and the vast pool of knowledge could be pooled to improve Asset integrity and reliability, for collective benefit. One such example is the various ac-tivity committees / centres in various areas of M&I and operations created by the Centre for high technology India. Organisations may have their internal collaborative programmes, where even the research organisa-tions and academia to be roped in for greater value addition.

6. Tribology studies and expertise must be developed at each loca-tion: Its a well known fact that 5 to 6 % of GDP is lost by nations due to poor understanding of tribologi-cal issues and its wrong applica-tion. Each operations and mainte-nance engineers must be trained or certified in the science and arts of tribology. They should avail the opportunity provided by the Tri-bology Society of India (TSI) , which, in association of STLE of USA and IiPM, conducts certifica-tion programmes annually at the IndianOil institute of Petroleum Gurgaon (IiPM) Gurgaon. (www.tribologyindia.org).


Background

The growing public awareness about the menace of pollu-tion during the last decade has resulted in several measures like fuel quality and vehicle technology improvements and introduction of alternative gaseous fuels like CNG & LPG. Based on the recommendations of the expert committee headed by Dr R.A. Mashelkar, Govt. of India announced its Auto Fuel Policy in October, 2003 which provides a clear road map for changes in the vehicle technology and corre-sponding fuel quality for the whole country and measures to reduce emissions from in-use vehicles.

In Phase-I, Bharat stage III norms have been implemented in the cities of NCR, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Pune, Surat, Kanpur, Agra, Luc-know and Sholapur w.e.f 1st April’2005.

As per roadmap of the Auto fuel Policy, Euro-IV equivalent norms were to be implemented in above 13 cities and BS-III norms in rest of the country w.e.f 1st April 2010. BS-II/BS-III & Euro-IV equivalent fuel quality specifications re-quired to meet the laid down norms for gasoline and diesel are given in Annexure-1A to 1D

While dealing with the emerging superior quality fuels, supply and distribution becomes extremely important. In addition to road and rail movement of fuels, major portion of products in the country are distributed thru the vast pipeline network exist-ing across the country. In multi-product pipelines, the normal pumping sequence followed is MS, ATF & HSD wherein SK

acts as inter separation plug on the either side of two products i.e. (SK–MS-III-SK)-(ATF-SK)-(HSD-III-SK)–MS and so on.

At present, those locations where both BS-II & BS-III prod-ucts are required, BS-III grade products are sandwiched with BS-II parcels and the interphase is absorbed in BS-II prod-ucts. However, locations where neat BS-III products are re-quired, normal SKO is used as plug parcel on either side of the product and the interphase is absorbed in the base prod-uct. Accordingly the interphase of SKO-HSD and SKO-MS is absorbed in HSD & MS respectively.

At refineries end, sufficient cushion is kept in the manufacturing specifications of base product(s) so that apart from requirement of precision limits of testing (repeatability & reproducibility); it takes care of the impact of absorption of interphase also. Thus the manufacturing specifications at refinery end are much more stringent as compared to required BIS specifications.

With regard to pumping of Euro-IV equivalent products, the major difference in the BIS specifications of BS-III & Euro-IV equivalent products would be the Sulphur Content. The Sulphur Content for Euro-IV equivalent grade of MS & HSD will be 50 ppm as against same being 150 ppm & 350-ppm for MS & HSD respectively for BS-III grades.

In view of the large difference in the sulphur content of Eu-ro-IV equivalent fuels (50 ppm) as compared to BS-III fuels (150/350 ppm), the sandwiching of Euro-IV MS / HSD with normal grade of SKO (1000-2400 ppm) thru multi-product pipelines would not be feasible.

Techno-economically Feasible Model for Pumping of Euro-IV Grade Auto Fuels thru Multi Product Pipelines

Dr. A.A. Gupta & R.K. ChughIndian Oil Corporation Limited

Pipeline Transportation

Accordingly, a multidisciplinary com-mittee was constituted with the objec-tive of interface management for Euro-IV equivalent products transported through multi product Pipelines and other related matters. Composition of the committee includes Dr A.A .Gupta DGM( F&E) – R&D as Convener and members; Shri P.D. Bahukhandi, GM (QC), HO, Shri V.K. Malhotra, GM (PJ-Elec), P/L and Shri R.K.Chugh, DGM (T) - RHQ

The present report is based on facili-ties, infrastructure and operational pro-cedures prevalent at Indian Oil Corpo-ration Limited.

Methodology Followed

As a first step, the committee decided that since the main change in specifi-cation of Euro-IV equivalent products as compared to BS-III products is w.r.t the Sulphur content, the scope of delib-eration should focus on management of sulphur content as treatment for all other specifications shall remain the same as is the case with BS-III prod-ucts. Since the sulphur estimation in the range of 50 ppm & below cannot be accomplished using conventional techniques therefore, it was decided to consolidate information related to ac-curately testing of sulfur content less than 50 ppm both for MS & HSD.

Subsequently, in order to achieve the end objective of delivering rail/road equivalent quality products at market-ing end, it was decided to first finalize the manufacturing specification for Rail & Road dispatches (w.r.t Sulphur content) and thereafter study all pos-sible options of pumping products thru multi-product pipelines.

Following steps were followed:

a) Finalization of testing methodology of sulfur content in MS and HSD at <50 ppm levels.

b) Finalization of Rail/Road “Manu-facturing Specifications” of Euro-IV products w.r.t sulphur content.

c) Best practices followed internation-ally for management of interphase in multi product pipelines and their applicability in Indian context.

d) Study the techno economic feasibil-ity of various options available:

1. Producing entire pool of MS/HSD of enough superior quality to ab-sorb interphase with normal SKO.

2. Absorption of HSD-SKO inter-phase in SKO instead of current practice of absorption in HSD by adjusting quality of SKO.

3. Sandwiching the Euro-IV equiv-alent MS/HSD fuels with BS-III MS/HSD on both sides (where demand for both BS-III and Eu-ro-IV fuels exists)

4. Collecting the interface at TOPs (Tap off Points) and sending back the same to Refineries for reprocessing.

5. Collecting the interface at TOPs and processing it at pipeline lo-cations itself.

6. Feasibility of using mechanical/chemical separators in pipeline.

7. Reviewing the possibility of sell-ing interface.

8. Producing Pipeline Compatible Kerosene (PCK) & using the same as Chemical Separator.

e) Finalisation of manufacturing spec-ifications for pumping of BS-III Auto fuels in rest of the country.

f) Review of the interchangeability of storage tanks for BS-III & Euro-IV equivalent Auto fuels

g) Recommendations with action plan. Testing methodology for sulfur content <50 ppm levels

Different test methods specified in the Indian Standards for testing of MS & HSD being practiced/planned to be used for measuring the sulphur content for Euro-IV equivalent products have been reviewed. Keeping in view the low sul-phur detection limit & precision of the test methods, WDXRF-ASTM D2622 is found to be the most appropriate test pro-cedure for Euro-IV equivalent auto fuels.

Finalization of Rail/Road “Manufacturing Specifications” of Euro-IV equivalent products w.r.t sulphur content

As per criterion of ISO-4259 for repro-ducibility limits and the methodology planned to be used for testing of sulphur content (WDXRF-ASTM D2622), the manufacturing specification for MS & HSD works out to be 48.6. However, considering past experience and prac-ticability of implementation, it was de-

cided that to start with the manufacturing specification w.r.t sulphur content for both MS & HSD may be kept as 46 ppm.

On gaining experience, these values shall be reviewed and necessary revi-sion may be made.

Best practices followed internationally for management of interphase in multi product pipelines and their applicability in Indian context

Literature survey was carried out to un-derstand the methodology used world wide for pumping of ultra low sulphur grade of products along with normal grade of products thru multi-product pipelines.

Apart from above, information was also collected using following addi-tional channels:

• Patent search• Posting query at Asian Develop-

ment Bank (ADB) and International Fuel Quality Center (IFQC) web-sites

• Interaction with participants in Re-finery Technology Meet (RTM) at Trivandrum by circulating question-naire.

• Interaction with delegates of World Refining & Fuels Conference held during Nov. 6-8, 2007 at Beijing, China.

• Inputs from Shell GlobalProduction and transportation of two different grades of fuels (e.g. BS-III and Euro-IV equivalent products) in differ-ent regions of the country are specific to India. No other country with substan-tial pipeline network has experience of transporting Euro-III and Euro-IV fuels through their multi product pipeline; therefore, desired information was not available thru these forums. Further, worldwide the sulfur content of various transportation fuels including inter sep-arating plugs pumped thru multi-prod-uct pipelines is very close to each other and hence no documented information could be obtained w.r.t our requirement of transportation of products with large variation in Sulphur contents.

M/S Shell Global during their Business Improvement presentation to MoP&NG on 05.06.07 indicated that as per their


feedback, worldwide pumping is done both with & without mechanical separa-tion. The feedback on the same received thru CHT is summarized as under:

a) Pumping without Mechanical Sepa-ration • Acceptance of some interphase

spreading with quality margins in the base product to offset this effect.

• Acceptance of some interphase spreading without quality mar-gins in the base product to offset this effect.

• Cutting of the interphase in to slop tanks for blend off, down-graded sales or reprocessing

• Select heart cut taken for critical customers.

b) Pumping with Mechanical separation • As per Shell Global the use of Me-

chanical separation does reduce the interphase quantity and there-fore results in lower contamina-tion levels but the criterion used for managing interphase without mechanical separation has still to be used as given in a) above.

c) Suggestions of Shell Global for re-duction of Product Interphase & Quality Giveaway• Sequencing of pipelines batches

such that multiple grades of MS are pumped together followed by multiple grades of HSD for mini-mum down gradation.

• Use of trans-mix /slop tank to ab-sorb the interphase for selective blending and reprocessing.

• Use of pigging to reduce HSD/MS interface.

• Pricing support for improved manufacturing specifications.

Techno-economically feasible options

Feasibility of producing entire pool of MS/HSD of sufficient superior quality to absorb interphase with normal SKO

The normal parcel size of MS for ma-jor pipelines varies from 10,000KL to 21,000KL and same for HSD remains in the range of 10,000 KL to 36,000KL, however for taking care of any even-tuality & applicability for majority of the pipelines, committee decided to consider parcel size of 10,000KL each for MS & HSD. For similar reasons, it

was decided to consider SKO sulphur content as 2400 ppm although the same varies from 1000 to 2400 ppm.

The comparative economics is based on expenditure likely to be incurred per batch of the product to be pumped. As per the actual experience of pipe-lines, the interphase quantity for front & rear end has been considered as 90 KL on each side both for MS & HSD i.e. for 10000 KL Parcel of MS/HSD, 180KL of interphase of SKO-HSD or MS-SKO, as the case may be, shall be generated.

It has been observed that in this case, it would be essential to produce entire pool of MS & HSD at refinery end having sulphur content of less than 24 ppm. The facilities being developed for producing Euro-IV grades products at refineries are targeting to produce MS & HSD to be 50 ppm sulphur con-tent. Therefore, the option of producing products having sulphur content less than 24 ppm by Dec’09 is technically not feasible.

Feasibility for absorption of HSD-SKO interphase in SKO instead of current practice of taking in HSD by adjusting quality of SKO The unconventional approach of blending HSD-SKO interphase in to SKO has been studied. Lab studies were carried out at Mathura, Panipat and R&D Center for assessing the impact of blending neat HSD in SKO in different percentages. The critical properties viz smoke point and FBP of SKO which were expected to be affected due to blending of heavier material (HSD) in SKO have been studied in detail. It is observed that up to 3% of neat HSD can easily be absorbed in SKO without affecting its smoke point & FBP.

The implementation of this option would require that the manufacturing specifications of SKO w.r.t FBP be re-duced from current level of 290 Deg C to 280 Deg C and the additional HSD generated on a/c of reduced FBP of SKO need to be processed in hydrotreator.

The overall cost for implementing this option works out to be Rs (-)5.90 Lacs/batch.

Sandwiching the Euro-IV equivalent MS/HSD with BS-III MS/HSD on both sides (where demand for both BS-III and Euro-IV equivalent fuels exists)

This option is already in vogue with BS-II and BS-III auto fuels pump-ing. The loss with this option is only to the extent of price differential be-tween BS-III and Euro-IV equivalent fuels. However, the only limitation is that this option can be implemented at places where there is demand for both BS-III and Euro-IV equivalent fuels. The financial impact works out to be Rs (-) 0.33 Lacs/batch for MS and (-) 0.15 Lacs/batch for HSD.

Collecting the interface at TOPs and sending back the same to Refineries for reprocessing

This option is technically feasible by developing suitable tankages at TOPs for collection of interphase, trans-porting the same to nearest refinery where again suitable tankages will be required for unloading, storage & spiking in the crude for reprocessing. Apart from tankage at both ends & transportation cost, equivalent crude t’put capacity at refineries will reduce impacting the corresponding margin of the refinery. This option although technically feasible is economically highly unattractive with financial im-plications of Rs (-) 37.4 Lacs/batch & Rs (-)22.70 Lacs/batch of MS and HSD, respectively.

Collecting interface at TOPs and processing it at pipeline locations itself

Reprocessing of interface at TOPs has following merits:• Savings in cost of transportation to

refineries.• No loss in processing capacity of

the process units of refineries.• Savings in excise duties paid on the

products.However, a critical review has been done to evaluate this option particular-ly w.r.t key specifications. Sulfur is the governing specification for transporta-tion of BS-III and Euro-IV equivalent fuels thru pipelines. With high sulfur SKO as inter separating plug, the inter-face collected at TOPs shall have very high S content as compared to the base MS & HSD. Reprocessing of the same


thru distillation without hydrotreat-ment facility would not give low sul-phur fractions that can gainfully be ab-sorbed in any of the fuels.

In this regard, experiments were also done at R&D Centre, which showed that sulfur gets migrated from SKO to diesel & gasoline fractions:

Sulfur Content: HSD-450ppm; MS-

200ppm & SKO-1300ppm

Even in 10% distillation fraction of diesel/gasoline the S content is quite high and therefore processing interface at pipeline TOPs without hydro-treat-ment is technically not feasible.

Feasibility of using mechanical/chemical separators in pipeline.

As per the feedback received from International Pipeline Operators, use of batching pig for effective reduction of interface quantity have not been found to be very successful and hence not commercially used. However, a trial run of batching pig was conducted in Mathura-Bijwasan section of MJPL by using 16-inch high seal Bi-di pigs (comprising of 2 nos of guide discs and 6 nos of sealing discs) in Oct 2006, Chennai–Asnur Section of CTMPL (14 ‘’ dia) in MS parcel in April 2006 using imported TDW batching pig and in Barauni Patna section (20’’dia) of BKPL in HSD in March 2007. It was observed that the interface reduction was only in the range of 5-7% in MJPL; how-ever there was no reduction in inter-face quantity in other pipelines. Shell Global has also observed that regard-less of the percentage reduction, the criterion for managing the interface without mechanical separation is still required to be used.

Literature survey indicates that poly-mer / chemical pigs are being experi-mented for positive segregation of mis-cible fluids albeit not in commercial use as yet. However, pipeline must keep track on such developments and carry out trial runs in multi-product pipeline as and when commercial products are available. Needless to mention that re-quirement of these devices would be of much more useful in futuristic specifi-cations beyond Euro-IV.

Reviewing the possibility of selling interface

Interface generated at locations does not meet BIS specifications of any of the petroleum products allowed to be sold in the market. Further, unlike abroad, the statutory requirements do not allow disposal of this type of non-standard products in the open market. As controlling fuel adulteration is one of the major challenges for the enforc-ing agencies therefore, getting clear-ance for disposal of such products is not possible.

Using Pipeline Compatible Kerosene (PCK) as Chemical Separator.

Under this option, it is proposed to attach a small quantity of about 150-200 KL of Euro-IV grade Pipeline Compatible Kerosene (PCK) plug at front & at tail end of the normal SKO parcel (1500-2000 KL) as is the current practice of pumping zero rating SKO along with normal SKO parcel for ATF.Accordingly, PCK requirement for all the major pipelines planned to be used for Euro-IV equivalent auto fuels pumping was reviewed. The number of

PCK parcels & corresponding quanti-ties for MJPL, PRPL, KAPL & HM-RPL works out as under:

Out of the four refineries viz. M, J, P & H from where Euro-IV grade fuels

are planned to be pumped effective from April’2010, hydrocrackers are already operating at M, J & P while at Haldia a new Hydocracker is in the project stage and is planned to be commissioned by Dec’09. Therefore, sufficient quantity of PCK required as inter separating plug for pumping of Euro-IV grade auto fuels thru multi-product pipelines shall be available from hydrocrackers of all these refin-eries. Normally this particular stream of SKO from Hydocracker is utilized for production of ATF or Euro-III HSD as per product requirement and availability of other streams in the re-finery.

This option requires construction / identification of two small capacity dedicated tanks of around 3000 KL each (size may vary from refinery to re-finery) for segregated routing of SKO ex hydrocrackers, receipt from external sources (import by marketing or stock transfer from other refineries) storage, testing & pumping requisite quanti-ties at front & rear end of normal SKO during pumping of Euro-IV equivalent MS & HSD. Existing procedure shall continue to be followed for pumping of ATF as there is no change in the speci-fications of ATF.

The overall gain (cost) for implement-ing this option works out to be Rs (+) 5.26 Lacs /batch for MS and (+)0.26 lacs/batch for HSD.

In case of any eventuality of non-availability of PCK at a particular re-finery, same can be stock transferred from other refineries. Alternatively, PCK of requisite quality can be im-ported, as currently also about 0.7-0.8 MMTPA of dual-purpose kerosene is being imported every year by IOCL, Marketing.

Selection of technically feasible & cost effective options

Details of various options studied above are summarized as under:

From below table, it is amply clear that out of all the feasible options the op-tion of Producing & attaching Pipeline Compatible Kerosene (PCK) in front & rear end of normal SKO is the most eco-nomical & technically viable option.

Sample Details HSD+SKO (1:1)*

MS+SKO (1:1)*

Base Blend 873 752

10% Distillate 590 221



* ppm; w/w

Attribute No of Parcels / Month

Quantity of PCK, TMTPA

MJPL 13 31.6

PRPL 4 20.2

KAPL 12 30.2

HMRPL 19 46.0


Methodology of Quality Assurance

Measurement of density & batch length quantity will continue to be the tool for interface detection. However, in view of very stringent specifications of Euro-IV equivalent fuels w.r.t sulfur content, on-line quality monitoring of sulfur in multi-product pipelines is rec-ommended for continuous monitoring & quality assurance.

Internationally also, the use of Sul-fur Measurement Instruments is pre-ferred for quality monitoring during pumping. One of the internation-ally used on-line systems, The XOS SINDIE Online System, has the ability to measure and display the results in 2 different time frames -

once every 5 minutes (for best ac-curacy and adjustable) and another every 10 seconds (adjustable). The 10 second measurement time is pre-ferred to determining the Interface of the 2 products more quickly. This fast response will allow the pipe-lines to place the instrument up-stream to the terminals and switch the streams well in time particularly for two grades of same product hav-ing different sulphur contents. Pipe-lines may like to consider carrying out trials with same or the similar system at one of the locations to assess its advantage in quality as-surance of Euro-IV equivalent auto fuels. Based on the outcome such a trial run, decision may be taken for extending similar facility to all the

product pipelines engaged for pump-ing of Euro-IV equivalent auto fuels.

Infrastructure, Logistic, QC requirements at Mktg., Pipelines and Refineries end

After thorough review and analysis, it is concluded that transportation thru’ pipeline mode shall continue for Euro-IV grade fuels also since the same is highly cost effective, eco-friendly and reliable mode of transport. Regarding laying of independent Pipelines, it is found that this will call for laying of a parallel network of independent prod-uct pipelines for each product across the country, therefore, this is not an implementable solution.

It was felt that the use of low sulfur kerosene as pipeline plug is the most optimal option.

In case of any eventuality of availabil-ity of PCK at the refineries, the same can be imported by marketing division as currently also about 0.7-0.8 MMTPA of dual-purpose kerosene is being im-ported every year by IOCL, Marketing.

Finalisation of manufacturing specifications for pumping of BS-III Auto fuels in rest of the country

As per Auto fuel policy, other than the 13 notified cities, rest of the country is to be supplied BS-III MS/HSD w.e.f 1/4/2010. Euro-III fuels to be pumped in rest of the country would require multiple tap-off points w.e.f 1/4/2010.

Currently at majority of the locations where BS-III products pumping is be-ing done (for catering to 13 notified cit-ies) there is a single tap-off point. How-ever, in future w.e.f 1/4/2010 pumping to the rest of the country would require multiple tap-off points.

In view of this, manufacturing specifi-cations to be maintained at the refinery locations planned to be switched over to BS-III grades of fuels have also been reviewed considering different levels of S in the kerosene plug with different parcel sizes.

In line with the current practice, it is presumed that the sulfur content in the

MS Figs in Rs Lacs/batch

Alt Description Financial impact

Technical Feasibility

1 Produce entire pool of MS of enough superior quality to absorb interphase with normal SKO

Not feasible. Manufacturing specifi-cation required for entire pool of MS would be of 24ppm which is not feasible.

2 Collecting the interface at TOPs and processing the same at pipeline loca-tions itself.

Not Feasible in view of sulphur migration from normal Kerosene to Auto fuels

3 Segregating the interphase and transporting it back to refinery for reprocessing

(-)37.43 Feasible

4 Sandwiching the Euro-IV equivalent MS fuels with BS-III MS on both sides

(-) 0.33 Feasible only at locations where demand for both Bs-III and Euro-IV equivalent fuels exists.

5 Using Pipeline Compatible Kerosene (PCK) as Chemical Separator.

(+) 5.26 Feasible

HSD

1 Produce entire pool of HSD of enough superior quality to absorb interphase with normal SKO

Not feasible. Manufacturing specifi-cation required for entire pool of HSD would be of 24ppm which is not feasible.

2 Collecting the interface at TOPs and processing the same at pipeline loca-tions itself.

Not Feasible in view of sulphur migration from normal Kerosene to Auto fuels

3 Collecting the interface at TOPs (Tap of Points) and sending back the same to Refineries for reprocessing.

(-) 22.66 Feasible

4 Absorption of HSD-SKO interphase in SKO instead of current practice of absorption in HSD by adjusting quality of SKO

(-) 5.90 Feasible

5 Sandwiching the Euro-IV equivalent HSD fuels with BS-III HSD on both sides

(-)0.15 Feasible only at locations where demand for both Bs-III and Euro-IV equivalent fuels exists.

6 Producing Pipeline Compatible Kerosene (PCK) & using the same as Chemical Separator.

(+) 0.26 Feasible


kerosene would continue to remain in different pipeline units varying from 500ppm to 2000ppm. Use of this SKO as inter-separating plug in multi-prod-uct pipelines, would require manufac-turing specifications w.r.t sulphur of base HSD to be maintained in differ-ent pipelines from 300ppm to 340ppm. Similarly, manufacturing specification w.r.t sulfur content of the base MS would be in the range of 125ppm to 145ppm.

Other required specifications in MS & HSD would be similar to current levels being maintained in the refineries pres-ently supplying BS-III grade transpor-tation fuels.

Interchangeability of BS-III & Euro-IV auto fuel tanks

Since there is wide variation in the sulphur content of BS-III & Euro-IV grades of auto fuels, it is felt that the existing flexibility of inter-changeabil-ity of BS-II & BS-III tanks will not ex-ist in case of BS-III & Euro-IV grades of fuel. Therefore, refineries as well as marketing locations should consider segregated storage & handling of BS-III & Euro-IV equivalent auto fuels.

Recommendations

Use of Pipeline Compatible Kerosene (PCK) having sulphur content less than 42 ppm for pumping of Euro-IV equivalent fuels

Incase normal kerosene is to be used as inter separating plug, it would be essential to produce entire pool of MS & HSD at refinery end having sulphur content of less than 24 ppm which is technically not feasible. Thus attaching a small quantity of about 150-200 KL of PCK at front & tail end of normal SKO parcel is found to be most cost effective and technically feasible option.Suggested Key Steps:

1) Additional tanks at Mathura, Pa-nipat, Gujarat and Haldia Refineries for storing sufficient quantity of PCK so that pumping operations are not impacted even if the hydrocrackers undergo unplanned shutdowns.

2) Piping modification for routing ker-osene ex hydrocrackers to dedicated tanks, suction & discharge header modifications along with hook up with pumps & manifold required for pipeline pumping.

3) Development of Facilities for un-loading/handling of PCK from alter-nate sources viz import by marketing or stock transfer from other refiner-ies’ in the eventuality of non-avail-ability of same from own HCU (s).

4) PCK tanks should have positive segregation with normal SKO & other product tanks so that in no case normal SKO or any other prod-uct ingresses when PCK is being pumped.

5) Pumping philosophy to be worked out by individual refineries so as to ensure that line fill of suction/dis-charge headers of normal SKO are suitably displaced and minimum 150 KL of PCK is actually pumped along with front & tail end of nor-mal SKO preceding & succeeding Euro-IV equivalent MS & HSD.

6) It is expected that some amount of sulphur pick will be there by PCK from preceding normal SKO parcel; therefore to start with refineries will supply PCK of 42 ppm which may gradually be increased to 46 ppm as per actual experience.

7) Keeping in view the low sulphur de-tection limit & precision of the test methods, WDXRF-ASTM D2622 is found to be the most appropriate


R K Chugh , a Chemical Engi-neer from BITS, Pilani has 29 years of wide working experi-ence in different areas of refinery operations viz Process Engineering, Production, Advanced Process Control, Planning & Coordi-nation , ENCON , Cost & Economics and Quality Control. He has worked in all major refineries of IOCL Viz Gujarat, Haldia, Panipat & Mathura as well as twice at RHQ. He is presently working as Deputy General Manager and heads Technical Services Department of, IOCL. Mathura Refinery.

Dr. Anurag Ateet Gupta is General Manager looking after Fuels & Ad-ditives with additional charge of Bitumen, Projects & Engineering. Dr. Gupta is PhD in Chemistry from Lucknow University (1982) & MBA from University of Ljubljana, Slovenia (1996). Dr. Gupta joined IndianOil R&D Centre in 1982 as Research Officer and worked in the areas of Lubricant Development, Additive Synthesis & Development, Fossil & Alternative Fuels, Fuel Adulteration Abatement Studies, Hydrogen Research, Environmental Studies, IP, etc. His areas of specialization in-clude product & process development in fuels related areas, chemistry

& performance evaluation related to petroleum fuels & lubricants, besides issues related to IP & gen-eral management. He has to his credit three consecutive Golden Peacock Awards, Petrofed Innovation award & National Technology Development award for the development of indigenous Diesel additive. Dr. Gupta has been instrumental in the Development of award winning & commercially exploited Diesel Multifunctional Additive (DMFA), development of Delhi Driving Cycle, Devising an Innovative Model for Transportation of BS-III & BS-IV fuels across the country and designing of Product Quality Monitoring program for IOC products. He is recipient of Shradhanand Singh Silver Medal for his excellent perfor-mance in MBA and he has to his credit more than 100 national & international publications, eight US and eighteen Indian patents.

Dr. A A GuptaR K Chugh

test procedure for Euro-IV equiva-lent auto fuels. Accordingly, all re-fineries and marketing locations to procure and commission suitable equipment to have uniformity of test results at all locations.

Sandwiching Euro-IV equivalent MS/HSD with BS-III MS/HSD on both sides

This option may be implemented at places where there is demand for both BS-III and Euro-IV equivalent fuels. Suggested Key Step:

This option is already in vogue with BS-II and BS-III auto fuels pumping. How-ever, in view of very large difference in sulphur content of BS-III and Euro-IV equivalent fuels, positive segregation must be ensured to avoid contamination of Euro-IV equivalent products.

Trial run with mechanical/chemical separators in pipeline

Internationally Polymer / Chemical pigs are being experimented for positive segregation of miscible fluids. The requirement of these devices would be of much more useful in futuristic specifications beyond Euro-IV grade of transportation fuels.Suggested Key Step:

Pipelines to keep track on developments related to commercial use of Polymer /Chemical Pigs and carry out trial runs in multi-product pipelines as and when these products are commercially available.

Manufacturing specifications for Pumping of BS-III Auto fuels in rest of the country

BS-III auto fuels to be pumped in rest of the country would require multiple tap-off points w.e.f 1/4/2010.Therefore, man-ufacturing specifications currently appli-cable to supply locations (for catering to 13 notified cities) may not be applicable for locations which will supply this prod-uct in future to rest of the country

Suggested Key Steps:

i) Sulfur content in the normal kero-sene to continue in the range of 500ppm to 2000ppm.

Interchangeability of BS-III & Euro-IV auto fuel tanks:

There is a wide variation in the sulphur content of BS-III & Euro-IV grades of auto fuels therefore, interchangeabil-ity BS-III & Euro-IV grades of fuels to be avoided.

Suggested Key Step:

Refineries as well as marketing loca-tions are required to consider segre-gated storage & handling of BS-III & Euro-IV equivalent auto fuels.

Methodology of Quality Assurance Measurement of density & batch length quantity will continue to be the

tool for interface detection. However, in view of very stringent specifications of Euro-IV equivalent fuels w.r.t sulfur content, on-line quality monitoring of sulfur in multi-product pipelines is rec-ommended for continuous monitoring & quality assurance.

Suggested Key step:

To start with, Pipelines may consider carrying out trial run with On-line Sul-fur Analyzer at one of the locations to assess its advantage in quality assur-ance of Euro-IV equivalent auto fuels. Based on the outcome such a trial run, decision may be taken for extending similar facility to all the product pipe-lines engaged for pumping of Euro-IV equivalent auto fuels.

Conclusions

IOC & other OMCs have accepted the report and are pumping BS-III & BS-IV fuels in multi-product pipe-lines as per the committee recom-mendations.

Acknowledgements

Authors wish to acknowledge the help provided by the committee members and other officials of IOCL across vari-ous divisions and to IOC-R&D man-agement for according permission to publish the paper.


Development of KGD6 Deepwater (D1/D3) Gas Field Kakinada, East Coast of India: by Reliance Industries Ltd.

Size of the Project

Project Description Under Production Sharing Contract (PSC) with Govt. of In-dia, the KG D6 block was awarded to Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) and Niko (Neco) Limited in the year 2000, in the first round of New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP). RIL, as an Operator of the block holds 90% of the participat-ing interest and NIKO the remaining 10%.

Development of D1 & D3 gas fields in KG D6 block is one of the fastest Greenfield deepwater developments. The reser-voir is located about 2000 m below the sea bed. The water depth in D1 & D3 development area ranges from 400 m to 1200 m. 18 subsea wells have been drilled and connected to six subsea manifolds via flowlines. Gas received at manifolds passes through the Deepwater Pipeline End Manifold (DW-PLEM) to shallow water Control and Riser Platform (CRP). Gas received at CRP then flows through 3x24” gas trunklines through a narrow river section to Onshore Terminal (OT).

The gas received at OT is separated from associated liquid

slug and dehydrated before passing through the custody transfer metering system to the Gas transportation network.

Uniqueness of the Project

1. This is a unique case of creative aggregation of advanced technologies coupled with an innovative and aggressive execution.

2. More specifically, within a short span of nine years since its foray as an Operator into oil and gas exploration and production, Reliance Industries Ltd. (RIL) has positioned itself at the forefront of deepwater exploration and pro-duction through its KG D6 project.

3. RIL struck the world’s largest discovery for the year 2002 in its very first endeavor and that too in a deepwater well.

4. Through an innovative and aggressive execution plan, the process of discovery to production was completed in an unprecedented time frame of six and half years as against the global average of eight to ten years.

5. The unit finding and development (F&D) cost is almost 30% lower than global averages for similar deepwater project commissioned worldwide (Refer Fig.1.2).

6. RIL used the cutting edge technologies from high reso-

Figure 1: Block Location & Salient Features

Petrotech Excellence Award - 2010

lution imaging to reservoir model-ing. The very best of science and technology in the fields of geology, geophysics, petro-physics, reservoir modeling, drilling and completions and deepwater field development were deployed.

Development Scheme A “subsea to beach” concept was im-plemented as part of the gas production facilities. The key principles & guide-lines considered in design and selection of equipment / facilities were based on the following:

• Safety in operations• Proven technology as far as possible• Use of standard Equipment / Prod-

uct• Simplicity in design and operation• Flexibility for integration of other

known and future discoveries• Maximize reliability and availability• Ease of construction / installation The selected development concept

involved “Full Sub-sea Production System with a Shallow water Con-trol & Riser platform and an On-shore Gas handling Terminal”.

• Development wells - Drilling & completion of 18 wells

• Offshore Facilitieso 18 Subsea XMTs & Long offsets

upto a water depth of 1200mo 6 Subsea Manifolds (With a pro-

vision to connect upto 6 wells each)

o One DWPLEM at 588m water depth

o 14x 8”/10” flow lines from Wells to Manifolds

o 6x 16”/18” Deepwater infield pipelines from Manifolds to DWPLEM

o 2x 24” Gas trunk lines from DW-

PLEM to CRPo Manned Control & Riser Plat-

form at 100m water deptho 3x 24” Export gas pipelines from

CRP to OTo 3x 6” MEG lines from OT to

Umbilical Distribution Hub (UDH) for hydrate inhibition

o Block Valve Station (BVS) at Land Fall Point (LFP)

o Subsea Control System (SCS) & Umbilicals

The subsea facility weighs nearly 125,000 metric tons, comprising 350-km of pipelines, 150-km of umbilicals and over 200 subsea tie-ins.

• Onshore Terminal – The gas from offshore enters the OT and passes through pressure reducing station to the slug catchers where the bulk liquids are separated from gas. The gas is then dehydrated before being put into the gas transporta-tion network to the end users.

• OT comprises of major componentso Pressure reduction station and

HIPPSo Slug catchers / Inlet Gas Heater

trainso TEG Dehydration trainso MEG reclamation and regenera-

tion trainso Flare systemo Captive power generationo Custody transfer metering Sys-

temo All necessary utility & offsite fa-

cilitieso Effluent Treatment & Disposal

system.Complexities Involved The D1& D3 Gas development project was distinctive due to many notewor-thy & unique features.

• It is the first deepwater development in India.

• The Second most prominent feature is its scale. It was a multibillion dol-lars mega project having deepwa-ter facility developed in hostile sea conditions of high waves, strong currents and cyclones

• The third remarkable feature of the project was difficult times and tough external environment (2006-08). The project was executed amongst odds like tight market conditions, scarcity of rigs, installation vessels & barges and skilled manpower, cultural challenges, different time zones, complex logistics etc.

Figure 2: Global Averages of Unit finding and development (F&D) cost

Development Schematic - Dhirubhai-1 & Dhirubhai-3 Gas Fields


By all standards, the development of the D1/D3 fields in the KG-D6 block has been one of the most challenging projects in the field of exploration and production of hydrocarbons, anywhere in the world.

Subsurface

• Complex reservoir architecture with sinusoidal channels. Selection of wells with optimal reservoir content was a challenge. – Extensive seismic & well data (Logs, cores & testing) collected, analysed and integrated in reservoir model to characterize res-ervoir and define reservoir distribu-tion with improved clarity.

Drilling & Well Completions

• Timely availability of deepwater drilling rigs: – Suitable rigs for deepwater drilling & well comple-tions identified upfront and secured the rigs with a defined work scope.

• Highly unconsolidated sands & ef-fective sand control – Best suited de-sign selected such that all the stacked pay zones contribute to production

• High deliverability wells - Designed big bore completions

• Complex Reservoir Monitoring System (RMS) due to sand control and subsea : Selected proven RMS to the extent possible by extensive Factory Acceptance Test (FAT), Extended Factory Acceptance Test (EFAT) & System Integration Test (SIT) program

• Highly cost intensive well Inter-vention - Design based on well life cycle to minimize well intervention

Offshore Facilities

• Flow Assurance issues associated with deepwater subsea system – Continuous injection of MEG from OT to each wellhead. Venting provi-sions for hydrate remediation.

• Limited fair weather window (mid December to mid April) for offshore installation due to two monsoons every year and cyclonic weather conditions on the East coast of In-dia – Hired contractors to deploy the largest and state of art fleet of instal-lation vessels and barges at single location (More than 80 vessels and barges were working at peak) there-by opening up parallel work-fronts

• Managing interfaces due to multiple subsea equipments, contractors and sites – Interface register prepared during FEED stage and periodically updated during the execution stage.

• Complex subsea architecture to ac-commodate optimal placement of wells and long offsetso Installation of pipelines shorter

than the water deptho Installation of shorter umbilical

(shorter than the water depth)• Extremely soft sea bed conditions –

Anchor boxes installed deepwater for preventing pipeline walking

Onshore Facilities• Onshore Terminal site was remotely

located with no existing infrastruc-ture. – Infrastructure such as con-struction jetty, water & power for construction, Haul road from Land fall point to OT for transportation of Over Dimension Cargo (ODC), widening of access roads etc. devel-oped upfront before construction at OT commenced

• Onshore Terminal site was in a low lying area and surrounded by creeks. During monsoon, the site was prone to heavy floods. – Established the safe grade elevation of OT site, and site was raised by about 4.5 m, using approx. 4 MM cu.m of sand through hydraulic filling.

• Soft soil with low load bearing ca-pacity at OT site: Segmented piles with mechanical connectors were extensively used to support all equipments to avoid settlement.

• Sourcing and retention of skilled manpower in the areas at the remote site location – A workmen colony

was set up near OT that can accom-modate 10000 workers. All essen-tial, basic amenities were provided.

Contractors / Sub-contractors involved The contracting strategy was evolved taking into consideration aggressive target schedule, challenging market conditions, overbooked engineering and manufacturing industry & scarcity of resources. Accordingly suitable option was selected.

Given the suited contracting strategy and above complexity, two indepen-dent Project teams - one for Offshore and another for Onshore were formed. These teams were headed by individual Project Managers, supported by pack-age managers and discipline engineers.

In recognition of the potential risks due to multiple interfaces, RIL formed a dedicated team for managing the inter-faces. The interface team was headed by the Interface Manager reporting to the Project Manager/s.

Keeping in view the aggressive time-line, a strategy of pre-fabricated skid mounted equipment as against stick-build construction, was extensively ad-opted for OT facilities.

This helped in minimizing interfaces and distributing resource concentra-tion at multiple locations and thereby reducing the critical field resource re-quirement to manageable levels. Engi-neering and fabrication activities were carried out at more than 20 locations across the globe.

Figure 3: Project Interfaces Chart


Notable Achievement / Innovations

Project Objectives Project objectives were set in accor-dance with the reserve estimates, plateau production, the overall KGD6 block potential & proposed development con-cept for D1 & D3 gas discoveries.

• Monetize Dhirubhai-1 & Dhirub-hai-3 Gas Discoveries

• Facilities for 80 MMSCMD with provisions for future upgradation.

• Ability to integrate other Discover-ies including potential high pressure gas / rich gas from D1/D3 & adja-cent fields in KGD6 block

• To contribute to the energy security of the Nation

Improvement in Project Management Unparalleled Project Execution

In consideration of the Project Ob-jectives, the Project Team adopted a fast-track approach of executing EPC activities in parallel. It necessitated de-ploying team members at engineering consultants’ offices for a one-stop review of engineering documents and for expe-diting the review cycle. Procurement & commercial teams were also located at consultants’ offices for expediting order-ing decisions for packages/ equipment for OT. The document submittal, review and approval process was accomplished using a web based tool “eRoom” that helped the project teams stationed at dif-ferent locations globally to collaborate.

Similarly, dedicated expeditors were sent to vendors’ shop for expediting material / equipment deliveries. At fab-rication sites, dedicated construction management teams including Project planning engineers and quality inspec-tors were deployed for accelerating the fabrication activities.

Monitoring and Control Project Execution • Developed and managed an Integrat-ed Project Master Schedule, integrat-ing all the work packages level detailed schedules from Major Contractors

• Critical Path & Near Critical path analysis at regular intervals using Pri-mavera software

• A multi-tiered project review system was instituted for close monitoring and control

• Monthly progress reviews were held between RIL and major Partners with the participation of senior management representatives from both sides to ad-dress techno-commercial issues and find resolutions.

• Steering committees were formed with Project Sponsors drawn from RIL and Top Management representatives from various Project Partners to ensure continued alignment of Project objec-tives and goals. The role of the steering committee was to periodically review the project progress, and address criti-cal outstanding / unresolved issues and agree on a forward path.

• “War Room” concept- War room set up initially at

Mumbai and then at Onshore Terminal Facility set up consid-ering all the Project information could be available at single loca-tion 24x7 & readily available to the Senior Management for con-ducting reviews and meetings

- War room adequately equipped with communication hot lines, Pin-up boards for displaying Project status charts, Project trends & critical issues

Various tools and techniques were implemented during the Project implementation

• Extensive use of 3D modeling tech-niques to identify and resolve poten-tial clashes

• Use of Primavera, MS-Project & progress S-curves for effective scheduling and monitoring

• Pertmaster for Schedule risk analysis• Interface register and risk register

updates

Figure 4: Global Project Execution

Figure 5: Key Components & Contractors


• PEER reviews by internal RIL Sub-ject Matter Experts (SMEs) and other Operators

• Periodic audits by RIL internal SME’s and appointed external ex-perts

• Third party independent certifica-tion & verification by DNV

Achievements / Innovations

Various innovative solutions were imple-mented without compromising on the reliability. These out-of-box solutions benefited the project in gaining time, maintaining / improving the quality.

• Interpretation of reservoir models was undertaken using latest tech-nology including seismic inversion, Q marine data, etc. State of the art Virtual Reality centre was set up us-ing 3D immersive technology. Un-certainties associated with Prospect mapping for drilling of development wells was thus mitigated using latest technology.

• Extensive coring in development wells to collect rock samples, integration of well data with the seismic data for upgradation of reservoir model

• Well completion design performed by multiple service providers. Best suit-ed design was selected, orders were placed with multiple service providers

• Temperature Array Sensor (TAS) system on selected wells deployed, first time in world. The TAS is used to provide temperature data across the sand face to understand the res-ervoir during production.

• Single trip multi-zone cased hole frac-pack system installed in deepwater

• Big bore completions with 7” XMTs, allowed high well produc-tivity. 7” horizontal XMTs were used for the first time in India.

• Use of offshore vessel tracking sys-tem

• Installed piggyback pipelines in deepwater, first time in world

• Full blown, double sided venting system installed for hydrate reme-diation, first time in such a subsea production system

• Use of Anchor Box system to miti-gate pipeline walking phenomenon

• Unique installation methodology adopted for shallow & deep water umbilicals installation; viz. First converting a shallow water barge to

an umbilical lay vessel for very low water depths & then Hipping up of the same barge with a Dynamically Positioned (DP) pipelay vessel for deep water sections

• Extensive use of multiple Remote-ly Operated Vehicles (ROVs) for installation of deepwater produc-tion facilities

• Extensive HSE awareness amongst construction workers (elevated safe-ty standards in India)

Details of Cost & Time

Project Cost Break Up

Project Costs were estimated for all the scheduled activities like materi-als, equipment, services and facilities. Please refer below the high level cost break-up for the project.

Cost Projections

Cost Management Project Cost Management was an ex-tensive process involving estimating, budgeting and controlling. Project Costs were estimated for all the sched-uled activities like materials, equip-ment, services and facilities.

Due to the rare and uncommon fea-tures of this project bottom up estimat-ing was used. This involves estimating the cost of individual work packages or individual schedule activities with the lowest level of detail under major heads, viz; G&G studies, Reservoir Studies, Drilling & Completion ac-

tivities, Installation activities etc. This detailed cost is then summarized to higher levels for reporting and track-ing purposes. Though the actual cost was higher than the revised budget cost, it was within the contingency provided with the revised budget cost.

Cost, budget and plan v/s actual cost of the project can be made available upon request on conditional sharing basis to key stake holders / reviewer /auditor.

Time

Internal Target

Under the Production Sharing Contract, as a Contractor, there is no commitment and obligation to a particular schedule. Nevertheless, RIL maintained an internal aggressive schedule to achieve “Ready for First Gas” objective by June 2008. Considering the various challenges on this Project, the Ready for First Gas milestone was essentially achieved by the 30th March 2009. After final opera-tional checks on 1st April 2009, the first well was successfully opened declaring the formal commissioning of the Project

The Plan

Justification for the Extended Time

1) Extreme hostile weather conditions (Acts of God) – In any mega deep-water development project complex, weather has an important role to play. East coast of India experiences two monsoons in a year and is a cyclone prone area. No Indian Company had


earlier ventured into the installation activities in deepwater offshore. De-spite extensive historical data, actual conditions were different.

The project

a) Lost 470 major construction vessel days production during offshore in-stallation

b) Lost 57 work days due to un-sea-sonal rains, extremely high tempera-tures in Kakinada during construc-tion of Onshore Terminal

Resource constraints The project also faced acute shortages of drilling rigs, besides extended days for availability of two of the critical pipe lay vessels. Following are few ex-amples –

a) Drilling rigs – Mobilization extend-ed by 17 months to 23 months.

b) Installation vessels – mobilization extended by 30 days to 150 days

c) Non-availability of key structural & piping construction crafts and other equipment & material during peak time due to market conditions

Cascading effects of above The cascading effect of above resulted

in critical interface issues resulting in SIMOPS amongst all installation ves-sels and drilling rigs. This dynamic field situation forced us to resort to revised installation programs/ work-

arounds very frequently. This eventu-ally had some impact on loss of pro-ductivity and target completion date.

The project team through its exten-sive planning and coordination efforts minimized the impact due to above and beaten the international standard by completing the project in six and half years.

People Management

Team Building Periodic management review meetings & get-togethers were arranged with Contractors. Such exercises were extreme-ly useful in aligning all the Contractors towards Project objectives. The global scale of Proj-ect required the Project team to travel exten-sively in various parts of the world. Adequate fa-cilities were provided to the team even in remote

locations so that they remain in touch with their families. The project teams were deputed at Contractors’ engineer-ing / manufacturing locations so as to achieve cohesive team work. While the Project teams are in Mumbai office, continuous interaction at various sites was made possible with the help of Au-dio / Video conferencing, etc.

Training

Graduate engineers with 4-5 years ex-perience were identified and associated with SMEs (such as Subsea Controls, Offshore construction) from day one. Training needs were identified on indi-vidual basis and training programmes were arranged for improving the skill sets. Training programmes on deep-water technologies, Helicopter Under-water Ingress Training (HUET) were imparted to most of the personnel working offshore. Graduate Engineer-ing Trainees (GETs) inducted on the project were assigned at Onshore / Off-shore construction sites and groomed by experts / Company Senior Reps.

Retention & Incentivisation There was a boom in global market and hiring of skilled resources and retain-ing them was a big challenge. Various schemes were successfully implemented.

The OT site was remotely located and lacked basic amenities & infrastruc-ture. Considering the huge workforce requirement at OT, a workmen colony of 10000 workmen was set up near OT. Common kitchen and dining facility besides other basic amenities were pro-vided within the colony. This concept, apart from improving the productivity, also helped in retaining the workmen.

Major Milestones Internal Target Actual Dates

Project Initiation October 2002 October 2002

Client Approval(Management Committee)

April 2007 December 2006

Ready for First Gas Production June 2008 March 2009

Completion of all Facilities December 2008 August 2009

Project Close-out June 2009 December 2009


Future of Energy

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Û [kqnkbZ ds le; xSl dk vfu;af=r fudkl Û [kqnkbZ ds le; vkSj ckn esa uyra= ds vkoj.k dks {kfr blh izdkj dh leL;k,a leqnzh ryNV esa [kqnkbZ ds le; esa Hkh lkeus vkrh gSA virfV; [kqnkbZ esa xSl gkbMsªVl ds uhps dh ryNV dks Hkh {kfr igq¡p ldrh gSA ftlls iwjs [kqnkbZ ;a= vkSj uyra= dks {kfr igq¡pk ldrh gSA

rVorhZ ,oa virVh; [kqnkbZ dh leL;k esa FkksMk vUrj gS ijUrq mudk dkj.k leku gh gSA ncko eSa deh rFkk rkieku esa of/n ds dkj.k [kqnkbZ ds le; gh Hkkjh ek=k esa xSl fudyus yxrh gSA rsy vkSj xSl tks LFkk;h rw”kkj ,oa virfV; bZykds ls uyra= }kjk lap;xg rd ys tk, tkrs gSa muds ekxZ esa Hkh ;g xSl gkbMsªVl vk ldrs gSaA bu laHkkfor ladV dks de djus ds fy, uyra= esa LVhy ikbi dk iz;ksx fd;k tkrk gSA dEiuh eq[;r% buls cpus dk iz;kl djrh gS D;ksafd vHkh xSl gkbMsªVl ds ;kaf=d vkSj rkih; xq.kksa dh foLrr tkudkjh miyC/k ugh gSA [kqnkbZ ds nkSjku ;fn lko/kkuh ugh cjrh tk, rks yxkrkj [kqnkbZ ls mlds fud-VorhZ bykds esa ryNV xeZ gks ldrs gSA ifj.kke Lo:i gkbMsªVl fo?kfVr gksdj fjlus yx ldrs gSA rsydwi ls rsy mRiknu ds izkjEHk gksus ds i’pkr] xeZ rjy inkFkZ ds cgus ls Hkh fudVorhZ ryNV esa mifLFkr gkbMsªVl fo?kfVr gks ldrs gSA ;g mRlftZr xSl ,df=r gksdj nkc mRiUu dj ldrh gSA ftlls rsydwi dh fnokjksa vkSj lajpuk dks dkQh {kfr gks ldrh gSA i;Zo{kdksa dk vuqeku gS fd xSl gkbMsªVl ds mRiknu esa Hkh blh izdkj dh leL;k,¡ lkeus vk ldrh gSA

vkfFkZd O;ogk;Zrk

xSl gkbMsªVl dh vkfFkZd O;ogk;Zrk blds mRiknu ds rdfudh fodkl ij fuHkZj gSA blds mRiknu ds fy, lqjf{kr vkSj dqly rduhd dh vko’;drk gSA rFkk bls mi;ksx esa ykus rd dh Hkh iwjh O;oLFkk gksuh pkfg,A lkFk gh ijaijkxr bZa/ku ds eqY; ij Hkh xSl gkbMsªVl dh vkfFkZd O;ogk;Zrk fuH-kZj djsxhA vr% bu rduhdh leL;kvksa dks lqy>kus ds ckn gh bl laHk-kfor lalk/ku dk lqjf{kr] O;olkf;d vkSj vkfFkZd Lrj ij mRiknu laHko gSA

Dr. Tushar S. Thorat is working as Manager at the Corporate Research & Development Cen-tre of Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited. He is working in the areas of crude evalua-tions, crude compatibility and blending, high acid crude processing, bitumen, bottom of barrel, bio-fuels and new product develop-ments. Dr. Tushar S. Thorat holds Ph.D. in Chemistry from ICT (formerly UDCT) in Heterogeneous Catalysis. He has over 15 years of experience in research and development.

Mohammad Muzaffar Ahsan is a Senior Research Scientist at Corporate R&D Centre of Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd, India. His areas of interest are crude oil processing, desalting operation, sludge processing techniques and alternate energy. He holds a masters degree in chemical engi-

neering from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur.

Mohd. Muzaffar AhsanDr Tushar S Thorat

Were the climate talks in Durban a success?Judging by what’s actually needed to tackle climate change, Durban was not a success. But compared to what’s politically possible, the talks were very constructive. Ne-gotiators confirmed their com-mitment to a second period of the Kyoto Protocol, which will ensure the continuation of its rules and mechanism beyond 2012. How-ever, the current framework only covers 15% of global carbon emis-sions.

Other outcomes of Durban are equally ambiguous. Governments agreed on the modalities of the Green Climate Fund, but more de-tails have to be worked out before it can be implemented – for example, who will pay and who will benefit.

The Durban agreement also pro-

vides the mandate to negotiate a global deal, to be concluded by 2015 and rati-fied by 2020.

It’s significant that it makes no a-prior-ity distinction between developed and developing countries, but stresses that they have “common but differentiated responsibilities” (CBDR). Yet, the ex-act legal form of this new pact remains subject to debate, and the goal of keep-ing global warming to 2° C above pre-industrial levels is very unlikely to be met – global emissions would have to peak by 2017 at the latest.

So what needs to happen to make this possible?To effectively address a global problem such as climate change, we need a glob-al response. The easy answer would be to put a price tag on carbon and manage emissions through a global system of cap and trade. This would solve one of

the biggest market failures, accord-ing to the Stern report, since it would take into account the environmen-tal and social costs associated with emissions. In the absence of such a regime, the second-best solution is a set of commitments by countries and regions to reduce their emissions.

But this poses the question of wheth-er the targets they set are sufficient and how these are enforced and im-plemented in a coordinated way.

What remains is the fundamental challenge of how to de-couple eco-nomic growth from energy demand. And let’s keep in mind that even if we were to stop all emissions today, societies would still have to adapt to a changing climate. This means cli-mate risks need to be managed pre-emptively

Green Initiatives - Discussing Durban: why it matters


fu"d"kZ

xSl gkbMsªVl ds mRiknu rFkk mls mi;ksx esa ykus ds fy, cgqeq[kh rFkk O;kid iz;kl vkSj ifj"drkZ ;a=ksa dh vko’;drk gSA gky gh esa cgqr lkjs m|ksx vkSj ljdkjh laLFkkuksa us xSl gkbMsªVl ds vuqla/kku ,oa fodkl lacaf/kr ifj;kstuk,a 'kq# dh gSA buls xSl gkbMsªVl ds vuqla/kku ,oa fodkl esa ;ksxnku dh cgqr vk’kk,a gSA

vkHkkj

ys[kd MkW- ,e- ,- flÌdh ¼dk;Zdkjh funs’kd½] MkW- ,u- oh- pkS/kjh ¼eq[; izca/kd½] Hkkjr isVªksfy;e fuxe

ds fyfeVsM ds vkHkkjh gSA ftUgksus bl ys[k ds izdk’ku dh vuqefr nh gSA ge Jh esy tktZ vkSj Jh fou; ekFkqj dks Hkh lgk;rk ds fy, /kU;okn nsuk pkgrs gSA

lanHkZ

Û okYVj ,l- cksjksldh] v fjo;q vkWQ ehFksu ,s.M xSl gkbMsªVl bu n MkbZukfed LVªkfVQkbM vkWQ Cysd fjM~t fjtu vkWQ’kksj lkvFkbZLVuZ ukFkZ ves-fjdk] dsfedy th;ksykSth] xzUFk 205] izdk’ku 3&4] 14 ebZ 2004] i"B 311&346

Û Mks Qw ‘ksu] ,V vy-] n th;ksdsfedy flXusplZ vkWQ oSfj;schy xSl osufVax ,V xSl gkbMsªV lkbV~l] eSfju ,.M isVªksfy;e th;ksykSth] xzUFk 21] izdk’ku 3] ekpZ 2004] i"B 317&326

Û th- Mh- ftUlcjx] fo- ,- lksyksfoo] ehFksu ekbxjs’ku fofnu n lcesfju xSl gkbMsªVl LVS-fcyhVh t+ksu vUMj Mhi okVj dfUM’ku] eSfju th;ksykSth] xzUFk 137] izdk’ku 1&2] Qjojh 1997] i`"B 49&54

Û dhFk ,- osuoksYMsu] v fjo;q vkWQ n th;ksdsfefLVª vkWQ ehFksu bu uSpqjy xSl gkbMsªVl] vkWjxs-fud th;ksdsfefLVª] xzUFk 23] izdk’ku 11&12] uoEcj&fnlEcj 1994] i`"B 997&1008

• http://www.ornl.gov/info/reporter/no16/methane.html

• http://marine.usgs.gov/fact-sheets/gas-hydrates/title.html

ifjp;

rsth ls c<+rs gq, vkS|ksfxfddj.k o c<+rh gqbZ ÅtkZ dh ekax] okrkoj.k esa dkcZu MkbvkWDlkbM dh of) ds mRiszjd jgs gSA okrkoj.k esa QSyk mPp lkaærk esa dkcZu Mk-bvkWDlkbM rsth ls cnyrs tyok;q vkSj Xykscy okfeZax fd izeq[k otg ekuh tkrh gSA xzhu gkml xSl dks fu;af=r djus ds rjhdksa ij fopkj ,d ;FkkFkZoknh le>nkjh gSA

thok’e bZa/ku] tks bl le; nqfu;k dh ÅtkZ dk 85% ls vf/kd vkiwfrZ djrk gS] gekjs fudV Hkfo"; ds fy, Hkh izkFkfed ÅtkZ lzksr jgus dh laHkkouk gS] gkykafd thok’e bZa/ku ds iz;ksx ls cnyko ,d izHkkoh j.kuhfr gS] ijaUrq blds izpqj ek=k esa mIyC/k gksus o de ykxr dk ÅtkZ lzksr gksuk] vge dkj.k gS fd ;g cnyko fudV Hkfo"; esa vlEHko yxrk gS] ,d oSdfYid j.kuhfr dkcZu MkbvkWDlkbM dks tCr dj mldk okrkoj.k iwy ls nwj lap;u djuk gSA blh otg ls oSKkfudks fd dkcZu izca/ku vkSj lap;u fo"k; esa #fp c<+h gSA

dkcZu lap;u dks vDlj o`{kkjksi.k ds lkFk tksM+k tkrk gSA isM+ fodflr gksrs gq, okrkoj.k ls dkcZu MkbvkWDlkbM dks lks[k ysrs gS] bflfy, tc rd ou lqjf{kr jgsaxs okrkoj.k esa dkcZu izHkkoh #i ls lapf;r jgsxkA

,d vU; izdkj dk dkcZu lap;u dk rjhdk gS dkcZu MkbvkWDlkbM dks fo’kky fLFkj lzksrksa tSls] fctyh la;a= ;k jklk;fud dkj[kkus ls tCr djds Hkwfexr tyk’k;ksa ;k xgjs leqæz es tek djukA egklkxj] izkÑfrd izfØ;k ds }kjk] thok’e bZa/ku ls fudys dkcZu dk djhcu ,d&frgkbZ Hkkx lapf;r djrk gSA vxj i;kZIr le; fn;k tk, rks ;g T;knkrj mRlftZr uohu dkcZu dks Hkh idM+dj mls vius dkcksZusV iwy esa 'kkfey djus es l{ke gSaA

egklkxj dkcZu pØ

egklxj ds dkcZu pØ ds lkj dks le>us ds fy;s ,d egklkxj ds rkieku dks leku o okrkoj.k ds

lkFk fLFkj voLFkk esa ekuk tk ldrk gSA bl idealized lkxj esa ikuh dks xgjs leqnz esa DIC (Dissolved Inorganic Carbon) ds lkFk sub-duct fd;k tkrk gSA tSls ;g ikuh lkxj esa QSyrk gS] blds organic drjs (detritus), nitrate o vU; inorganic inkFkks Z esa rematerialize gksrs tkrs gSA blls DIC c<+rk gS vkSj lkxj dh alkalinity de gksrh gSA blesa iks"kd rRoksa dh ek=k vf/kd gksrh gS vkSj lkxj esa dkcZu Mk-bvkWDlkbM dk vkaf’kd ncko mlds ok;qeaM+yh; ncko ls vf/kd gksrk gSA varr% bl ikuh ds lSdM+ks a o"kZ ckn upwell fd;s tkus ij ;g jks’kuh ds lEidZ esa vkrk gSA izdk’k la'kys"k.k (photosynthesis) ds dkj.k dkcZu jks’kuh ds {ks= ls fudy DIC, de djrk gS] igys iks"kd rRo organic inkFkks Z esa cnyrs gS] ubZ izkFkfed mRiknu izfØ;k ds }kjk bues ls dqN iks"kd rRo xgjs leqnzks a es pys tkrs gS] dqN mijh leqnz es remineral-ize gks tkrs gS vkSj fQj ls izdk’k l'ys"k.k ds vxys nkSj esa 'kkfey gks tkrs gSA ;g izfØ;k tkjh jgrh gS tc rd fd lkxj dk dksbZ ,d iks"kd rRo T;knkrj ( Nitrogen, 80% ;k Iron, lkxj 20%) [kRe uk gksA iks"kd rRoksa ds [kRe gks tkus ij izdk’k la'ys"k.k #d tkrk gS vkSj dkcZu MkbvkWDlkbM dk izokg okrkoj.k ls ikuh dh lrg fd vksj gks tkrk gS

egklkxjksa esa dkcZu dk lap;u

fou; ekFkqj ¼vuqla/kku oSKkfud½] lkaruq nkl ¼izca/kd½ fuxe vuqla/kku ,oa fodkl dsaæz] Hkkjr isVªksfy;e dkWjiksjs’ku fyfeVsM

Global Warming

tc rd fd egklkxj vkSj ok;qeaMy ds chp larqyu (equilibrium) u LFkfir gks tk,A fQj subduction ls izfØ;k iqu% izkjEHk gks tkrh gSA

dkcZu jlk;u foKku

dkcZu ds lkxj es jap’u tfd izfØ; dks tkuus ds fy; dkcZu jlk;u foKku dh le> vfuok;Z fo"k;ksa esa ls ,d gSA leqnzh ty vkSj leqnz ds [kfutksa ds lkFk dkcZu dh izfrfØ;k] Ocean Take-up dh nj dks izHkkfor djrh gSA dkcZu lkUnzrk (Concentra-tion) tc okrkoj.k vkSj lkxj ds chp larqyu esa gS] rc Henry’s Law ds vuqlkj ogk¡ dkcZu izokg ugha gksxk D;ksafd dksbZ Concentration gradient ugha gSA Equilibrium dh fLrfFk vkuk LokHkkfod gS D;ksafd okrkoj.k vkSj lkxj ds chp ges’kk dkcZu dk izokg jgrk gSA rhuksa cMs+ dkcZu tyk’k;ksa ds chp] egklkxj dh lcls vf/kd dkcZu HkaMkj.k {kerk gSA

dkcZu MkbvkWDlkbM dh leqnzh ty ds lkFk izfrfØ;k ls dkcksZfud ,flM (H2CO3) curk gSA

CO2 (g)+H2O-H2CO3 (aq)

dkcksZfud ,flM vkxs nks pj.k ckbZ & dkcksZusV vk;u (HCO3

-) vkSj dkcksZusV vk;u (CO3-) esa dis-

sociate gksrk gS

H2CO3 (aq) - H (+) + HCO3 (-)

HCO3 (-) - H (+) + CO3 (-)

bu cqfu;knh izfrfØ;k gesa lkxj esa dkcZu dh ek=k dk eku dj ldrs gSA buls ge vfrfjDr dkcZu dk lkxj ij izHkko izkIr dj ldrs gS] Total Alkalin-ity, Total Carbon, pH vkSj dkcZu MkbvkWDlkbM ds vkaf’kd ncko ds #i esa Total Carbon egklkxj esa fo|eku lc Inorganic Carbon dk tksM+ gSA lkxj esa dkcZu izokg rc gksrk gS tc okrkoj.k esa dkcZu MkbvkWDlkbM ,dkxzrk c<+ tkrh gSA ifj.kkeLo:i] leqnzh ty dh pH ?kV tkrh gSA Total Alkalinity ml charge dk eku gS tks An-ions dks leqnz ty esa ys ldrk gSA leqnzh ty esa Tatal alkalinity c<+kus ls dkcZu MkbvkWDlkbM dh solubility c<+ tkrh gSA

izkÑfrd dkcZu lap;u esa o`f)

lkxj esa dkcZu MkbvkWDlkbM ds izHkko dh kinet-ics dkQh /khjs gS] ftlls leqnz dh pje ok;qeaMyh; dkcZu MkbvkWDlkbM concentration dks lSdM+ksa o"kZ yx ldrs gSA blfy;s dkcZu MkbvkWDlkbM izca/ku ds fy, egRoiw.kZ eqÌk ;g gS leqnzh dkcZu uptake dh xfr dks rst djuk ,d lQy dkcZu lap;u dh rduhd gksus ds fy;s fuEu vko’;drk,sa gSA

Û izHkkoh vkSj ykxr izfrLi/khZ gksuk] Û fLFkj nh?kZdkyhu vkSj HkaMkj.k iznku djuk] Û i;kZoj.k lkSE; izfØ;k gksuk leqnz esa vfrfjDr dkcZu ds HkaMkj.k dh o`f) ds

fy, rhu rjhds gSa (i) izR;{k injection (ii) lkxj ds alkalinity dh o`f) vkSj (iii) lkxj fu"kspu (fertilization)

izR;{k Injection

bl izfØ;k fd eq[; xfrfof/k;k¡ gS%& dkcZu MkbvkWDlkbM dk capture, mls vyx djuk] mldk ifjokgu djuk o xgjs leqæ esa Inject djukA

dkcZu MkbvkWDlkbM dks tho’e bZa/ku dk mi;ksx djus okys fo’kky L=ksr tSls fctyh l;a= (Pow-er Plant) ls bDB~Bk dj mls Fixed ;k Towed Pipe line }kjk xgjs leqæz esa Dispersion ds fy, mldk ifjogu fd;k tkrk gSA xgjs leqæ esa dkcZu MkbvkWDlkbM dks inject djus dk rjhdk gS mls 1000-1500 ehVj dh Thermocline dh xgjkbZ ds uhps discharge djuk nks Injection ds rjhds izLrkfor gSA ,d gS rjy dkcZu MkbvkWDlkbM dks leqæ rV ls Pipe line ds }kjk mldk ifjogu djds mldk discharge leqæ rV ij ,d mani-fold ds }kjk djuk] ftlls ,d 100 ehVj Å¡ph Rising droplet plume cusxhA oSdfYid :i ls rjy dkcZu MkbvkWDlkbM dks VSadj }kjk leqæ esa ys tk;k tk ldrk gS vkSj ,d pyrs tgkt }kjk discharge fd;k tk ldrk gSA gkykafd nksuks forj.k ds ek/;e vyx gS] bu nks fodYikas ds ifj.kkeLo:i tks plume fudyrh gS oks leku ekuh tk ldrh gSA vf/kdre sequestration efficiency ikus ds fy,s dkcZu MkbvkWDlkbM dks max. approachable xgjkbZ esa Inject djuk pkfg,A bldk rjhdk gS rjy dkcZu MkbvkWDlkbM dks djhcu 4000 ehVj dh xgjkbZ esa inject djuk ftlls leqæ rV ij dkcZu Mkb vkWDlkbM Hydrates ds fLFkj “Deep lakes dh lajpuk gksA

egklkxj dh alkalinity c<+kukegklkxj dh alkalinity cnyus ds fy, carbon-ate, bicarbonate ;k Hydroxide ion es ls de ls de ,d dks cnyuk t:jh gS dqy alkalinity dh vfHkO;fDr gSA

TA =[HCO3 (-)] + [CO3 (2-)] + [OH(-)]

TA dks c<+kus ds fy, carbonate, bicarbonate dh lqaUnjrk vf/kd ls vf/kd gksuh pkfg,A ;s rc gkssxk tc lUrqyu cuk;s j[kus ds fy, T;knk dkcZu ok;qe.My ls egklkxj esa izos’k djsxkA bldk vFkZ gS

fd TA esa o`f) ls dkcZu MkbvkWDlkbM dk ikuh esa vkaf’kd nokc de gks tkrk gS vkSj blh rjg lkxj dh dkcZu MkbvkWDlkbM lap;u {kerk c<+ tkrh gSA

egklkxj fu"kspu

egklkxj fu"kspu ,d izdkj dh Geo-engineering gS ftlesa ikS"kd rRoksa dks mijh lkxj esa nkf[ky djok;k tkrk gS] leqæzh [kk| Ja[kyk dkcZu lap;u {kerk esa o`f) ds fy, leqæh [kk| Ja[kyk] leqnzh Phytopankton }kjk izdk’k la’ys"k.k ij vk/kkfjr gSA tks inorganic ikS"kd rRoksa ds lkFk dkcZu dk esy dj organic rRoksa dk fuekZ.k djrs gSA bu organic rRoksa dk fuekZ.k iks"kd rRoksa ¼T;knkrj Nitrogen ;k Iron dh miyC/krk ij vk/kkfjr gS½

1. Macronutrients (tSls Nitrogen) ds lkFk fu"kspudkcZu MkbvkWDlkbM vo’kks"k.k dks c<+kus dk ,d rjhdk gS macronutrients vkSj macronutri-ents ds la;kstu dks leqæ esa mu txgksa ij Mkyuk tgk¡ mu iks"kd rRoksa dh deh gSA bldk mn~ns’; gS Phytoplankton ds fodkl dks c<+kok tks] dkcZu MkbvkWDlkbM dk Hkkjh ek=k esa xzg.k djrs gS tc dkcZu MkbvkWDlkbM bl rjg leqæ dh lrg ls ?kVrk tkrk gS rc ok;qe.My ls mls [khp dj leqæz dkcZu MkbvkWDlkbM dh iwfrZ djrk gSA

2. Iron }kjk lkxj dk fu"kspuIron ,d egRoiw.kZ micronutrient gS Phyto-plankton ds fodkl vkSj mlds izdk’k la’ys"k.k ds fy,A rktk leqæzh ijh{k.k lq+>krs gS fd 1 fdyks- Iron ds eghu d.kksa ls 1,00,000 fdyks ls Åij Plankton biomass mRiUu gks ldrk gSA yksgs ds d.kksa dk vkdkj egRoiw.kZ gS] vkSj 0.5-1µm ls de O;kl ds d.k nksuksa (Sink rate o tSo miyC/krk½ ds fglkc ls vkn’kZ gSA


lkxj voyksdu o eWkMYl ls ;g fofnr gksrk gS fd injection dkcZu MkbvkWDlkbM lSdM+ksa lkyksa rd ok;qe.My ls vyx jgrh gS vkSj tSls&tSls injection xgjkrk tkrk gS] bldh ek«kk c<+rh tkrh gSA

dkcZu MkbvkWDlkbM ds vfËkd izfrËkkj.k ds fy, leqæ ry ij Bksl dkcZu MkbvkWDlkbM hydrate vkSj rjy dkcZu MkbvkWDlkbM >hyksa ds fuekZ.k ds }kjk vFkok Mineral carbonates ls dkcZu MkbvkWDlkbM Solubility c<+kdj Hkh fd;k tk ldrk gSA lfn;ksa ls lkxj feJ.k ds ifj.kkeLo:i Injec-tion dkcZu MkbvkWDlkbM us vyx&vyx LFkku ls izLFkku dj ok;qe.kMy ls fofue; LFkkfir fd;k gSA egklkxj ds c<+s {ks«kksa ls ;g izfØ;k Øfed gSA Injection dkcZu MkbvkWDlkbM ds vpkud izLFkku dk dksbZ dkj.k fofnr ugha gSaA

egklkxj esa dkcZu lap;u ds

i;kZoj.kh; izHkko

lkxj esa dqN Gt dkcZu MkbvkWDlkbM Inject djus

dk izHkko Injected {ks«k esa ds jlk;fud fØ;kvksa ij gksxkA tcfd Hkkjh ek«kk esa ¼lSdM+ksa Gt dkcZu MkbvkWDlkbM½ Inject djus dk ij iwjs lkxj [k.M izHkkfor gksxkA iz;ksx crkrs gS fd Gt dkcZu MkbvkWDlkbM leqæh lrg ds ikl jgus okys tUrqvksa dks uqdlku igqapkrh gSA T;knk ek=k esa dkcZu MkbvkWDlkbM ds izHkko dks leqæh lrg ds ikl jgus okys tUrqvksa esa Calcification, iztuu] fodkl dh njksa esa deh vkSj e`R;q dh nj esa o`f) ds ladsr feys gSA dqN thoksa esa ;s izHkko de ek«kk esa dkcZu MkbvkWDlkbM ds feJ.k ls Hkh ik;k x;k gSA In-jection {ks«k ;k dkcZu MkbvkWDlkbM dh >hyksa ds vkl ikl ds tho tUrqvksa dks rRdky ekSr dk [krjk Hkh gks ldrk gSA yEcs le; rd leqæ esa dkcZu MkbvkWDlkbM tek gksus ij thoksa esa LFkk;h izHkko dh vk'kadk Hkh dh tk jgh gSA gkykadh xgjs leqæ esa jgus okys thoksa ij bldk v/;;u ugha gqvk gSA

dkcZu MkbvkWDlkbM ds leqæh thoksa ij izHkko gksus dk ikjhfLFkfrd ifj.kke Hkh gksxk] ysfdu fu;af=r ifjfLFkfr ds bl izdkj ds iz;ksx xgjs leæz esa ugh fd;s x;s gSA blfy, laHkkfor ikjhfLFkfrd ifj.kkeksa dk flQZ ,d izkjfEHkd voyksdu fn;k tk ldrk gSA

visf{kr gS fd dkcZu MkbvkWDlkbM lkaæzrk dh o`f) ds lkFk ikjhfLFkfrd ifj.kkeksa dh o`f) gksxhA ijUrq bldh dksbZ i;kZo.khZ; threshold lhek izLrkfor ugh gSA Hkfo"; esa leqæh ijtkfr;k¡ bl fujUrj dkcZu MkbvkWDlkbM dh c<+rh gqbZ ek=k ls bl rjhds ls lkeatL; LFkkfir djsaxh] ;g Hkh Li"V gSA Injection {ks= dh jlk;fud o tSfod fuxjkuh o dkcZu Mk-bvkWDlkbM plume ds LFkkfud o ykSfdd iz;os{k.k ds }kjk dkcZu MkbvkWDlkbM dh ek=k fu/kkZfjr djus o blds laHkkfor i;kZofj.k; izHkkoksa dks tkuus esa enn feysxhA

fu"d"kZ

dkcZu MkbvkWDlkbM dk egklkxjks a esa lap;u djuk i;kZoj.k izcU/ku dh egRoiw.kZ j.kfufr gSA egklkxj esa dkcZu MkbvkWDlkbM dk fo?kVu c<+kus ds fy, rhu rjhds miyC/k gSA tc ok;qe.My esa dkcZu MkbvkWDlkbM dk vkaf’kd ncko c<+ tkrk gS rc Equilibrium esa dkcZu dh ek=k Hkh c<+ tkrh gSA okrkoj.k ds fujUrj vkaf’kd ncko dh fLFkfr esa dkcZu MkbvkWDlkbM dk izR;{k injec-tion leqnzh ty ds pH Lrj dks izHkkfor djrk gS ijUrq dkcZu dk LFkk;h :i ls egklkxj esa lap;u ugh djrk gSA

egklkxj dh alklinity c<+kus ls dkcZu MkbvkWDlkbM dks T;knk ek=k esa LFkk;h :i ls lapf;r fd;k tk ldrk gSA lkxj dks iksf"kr djus ls vfrfjDr dkcZu mlesa lapf;r fd;k tk ldrk gSA lkxj dks iksf"kr djus ls vfrfjDr dkcZu mlesa lapf;r fd;k tk ldrk gS tc rd egklkxj ds iks"kd rRo lajf{kr gSa vkSj mldh alklinity esa dksbZ nh?kZdkfyd ifjorZu ugh vkrkA {kf.kd vfo/k nkSjku tc lkxj iks"k.k fd;k tk jgk gS rc nitro-gen iks"k.k ds lkFk vuqdwy alklinity esa cnyko ykHknk;d gks ldrk gSA

fou; ekFkqjlkaruq nkl

fou; ekFkqj] vuqla/kku oSKkfud¼fuxe vuqla/kku ,oa fodkl dsUnz½ Hkkjr isVªksfy;e fuxe fyfeVsM] xzsVj uks,Mkch0 Vsd0 ¼iq.ks fo'ofo|ky;½ & jlk;fud vH;kaf«kfd ¼2007½,e0 Vsd0 ¼vkbZ0 vkbZ0 Vh0 [kM+xiqj½ & jlk;fud vH;kaf«kfd ¼2009½

vuqla/kku {ks«k% ck;ks QkbZcj izcfyr ikWfyej eSfVªDl dEiksflVl dk fuekZ.k] dsjSDVjkbZts'ku ,oa mi;ksx] fofHk™k ckbaMj ehfM;k esa fixesaV fMLitZu dk v/;uizkstsDV vuqHko% DST izk;ksftr TIFAC iz;ksx'kkyk ¼IIT [kM+xiqj½] lqn'kZu dsfedYl fy0 ¼iq.ks½ esa izkstsDV dk;Z] DySfj;saV dsfedYl bafM;k fy0 ¼Fkkus½ esa baVuZf'kiA Hkkjr isVªksfy;e ds vuqla/kku ,oa fodkl dsUnz ls vxLr 2009 esa tqM+sizkstsDV {ks«k% Hkkjr esa oSdfYid mtkZ dk mi;ksx

lkaruq nkl] izcUÄd¼fuxe vuqla/kku ,oa fodkl dsUnz½ Hkkjr isVªksfy;e fuxe fyfeVsM] xzsVj uks,Mkch0 Vsd0 ¼tknoiqj fo'ofo|ky;½ & jlk;fud vH;kaf«kfd ,e0 Vsd0 ¼vkbZ0 vkbZ0 Vh0 dkuiqj½ & jlk;fud vH;kaf«kfd

vuqla/kku {ks«k% uS¶rk fjQksfeZax ds nkSjku vksyhfQal vkSj ,sjkseSfVDl dh vfÄd mit ds fy, ckbesVsfyd mRizsjd ds O;ogkj dk v/;uO;kolkf;d vuqHko% fofHk™k IykUV lapkyuksa] j[k j[kko vkSj leUo; ,oa lqj{kk esa 20 o"kZ dk vuqHko dbZ u;s IykaV dh dfe'kufuax ,oa vkWijs'ku fLFkjhdj.k esa izeq[k Hkwfedk Hkkjr isVªsfy;e ds vuqlaÄku ,oa fodkl dsUnz ls fnlEcj 2008 esa tqM+sizkstsDV {ks«k% Hkkjr esa oSdfYid mtkZ dk mi;ksx] ikSÄksa ds vo'ks"kksa dk xSlhdj.k


Talent Management

“ I truly believe the industry has fantastic careers to offer young professionals, careers that are dynamic, challenging and deverse”

Catherine McGregorPresident, Wireline, Schlumberger

EmbracingTechnological InnovationInterview with Catherine McGregor

How would you define the role of young people in the energy industry? What is the greatest contribution that the younger generation of today has to offer the industry of the future? Today’s generation has this formidable ability to connect to other people wher-ever they might be: they travel a great deal more and of course they use the Internet and Social networks fluently. If you look at our industry, it is faced with ever-growing technical challenges and projects of massive scale, where mul-tidisciplinary and geographically dis-persed teams have to collaborate in order to meet these challenger. I really think that these requirements will play to the strengths of the younger generation.

Why is it, do you think, that some good ideas from young people do not get the chance to penetrate the organization of a company? How is your company structured to absorb and implement new ideas contributed by young professionals? Our industry has a reputation for be-ing conservative: new ideas tend to be confronted with statements such as” but we’ve always done it that way.” However, much can be done to ensure that good ideas reach the right level of every organization.

Giving responsibility to young people at an early stage of their career is a very effective way: if you have responsibili-ties, you can make things happen. An

informal and accessible style of man-agement is also very important to cre-ate an environment open enough for people to express their opinions and propose new ideas.

In my company we have a tradition of organizing” interchange Forums”: Ev-ery year, promising young employees are invited to spend three days with senior managers; interacting with them in a relaxed environment; working on specific business issues and proposing solutions. It is rare that impactful busi-ness decisions are not made by the man-agement team as a result of the feedback received form the participants.

How were you able to make an impact as a young professional in your organization? I held my first line management job fairly early on in my career. As a front-line man-ager you not only impact your customers but also the people working for you: their motivation, their view of the company and their professional ambition. Even on a small scale, this is very rewarding.

In the last few decades the oil industry has expanded massively, adding new technologies, countries and resources to the continuing challenge of extract-ing oil and bringing new products to market. Looking ahead, what do you think your generation has not achieved or could have done differently that should be the focus of the young pro-fessionals joining the industry today?

I think we must pursue faster new tech-nology adoption….in turn, we must reduce technology development and testing times to deploy future game changers more quickly.

Which young person that you have met has most impressed you, and why? I am often impressed by the young peo-ple I meet in my travels. The ones who stand out have often demonstrated an incredible adaptability when assigned to a new country, having overcome not just the professional challenges but also the language and cultural barriers. I can think of an American engineer who spent his first field years in re-mote Siberian locations, where he was forced to quickly learn Russian in order to perform his job; or again a young In-donesian manager in Mexico who had earned the respect of her customers and her own team through her professional-ism, her energy, and her ability to com-municate with them in Spanish.

The oil industry is widely perceived as an old and traditional industry, not only because of its long history but also because it demands such a long learning period to master as a subject. At the same time, we have seen in the recent past the blossoming of new industries that are more dynamic, with faster career trajectories, more appealing and with many big companies led by young professionals. How do view this discrepancy and do you think it is time for the oil industry to adapt to this new world order? If so, how should it do this? In fact, I believe it has already adapted to a certain extent! Most companies suffer a shortage of key technical skills and respond by taking more risks on people, developing them faster than in the past. I truly believe the industry has fantastic careers to offer young profes-sionals, careers that are dynamic, chal-lenging and diverse. And, indeed, I see this trend continuing in the future.

Please, formulate one question that you would like to see answered by the youth. Do you think we should better utilize social networks in our industry? How, to what intent, and what would be the impact, in your opinion?

Source: Special WPC Youth Magazine


WPC Youth ForumsUnique Events With Content Defined By Young Professionals

Manisha BhargavaDM, Bussiness Development, IOCL and WPC Youth Committee member, India

Burcu GunalGeological Engineer Strategy Analyst, Turkish Petroleum Corporation; Vice Chair on Member relations, students and Gender, WPC Youth Committee, Turkey

Anna Illarionova PhD Student Russian, Fpreogm Trade Academy, WPC YC Taskforce Member, Russia

Jaime Turazzi NaveiroPetrobras E&P Project Manager, Vice Chair Brazilian, YC, WPC YC Taskforce member, Brazil

Celine RottierOffshore Engineer, Repsol, Spain; WPC YC Vice Chair for Communication

The world Petroleum Coun-cil’s (WPC) Youth Forums are a veritable gathering of young and veteran, fresh

and experienced, seasoned and bud-ding. Being one of the few truly global platforms of its kind, where the young minds of the hydrocarbon industry co-alesce to focus on the future of youth and discuss contemporary issues and concerns, the Youth Forums are the experience of a lifetime for the energy leaders of tomorrow.

WPC Youth Forums provide students and professionals with a fantastic op-portunity to have a say in defining and resolving current and future industry challenges, elaborating on social and environmental issues and contribut-ing to finding potential solutions to problems. The way WPC Youth Fo-rums are organized is quite unique. Firstly, the initiative of organizing these events comes directly from the youth! Secondly, it is the students and young professionals, who constitute the Programme Committee for the Fo-rums, formulate their content and key points for discussion, choose the dis-tinguished speakers and communicate with them on stage. Have you ever seen or heard of such a thing happen-ing before? Finally, each Forum has a distinctiveness that makes it com-pletely different from previous ones.

For instance, the 1st WPC Youth Fo-rum Youth and Innovation-the Fu-ture of the Petroleum Industry held in Beijing (China) from 17-20 October 2004 was the first of its kind in which young people played a leading role in the WPC’s 71-year history. This Youth

Forum laid the foundation for interna-tional exchange and cooperation be-tween students, young professionals and senior colleagues from oil and gas companies and academia, and that be-came the genesis for the creation of the WPC Youth Committee in late 2006. Since then, young professionals and students have been on the World Pe-troleum Council’s agenda as one of its most significant, foremost concerns.

The 2nd WPC Youth Forum Energies’ Your Future held from 18-20 November 2009, in Les Pyramids, Paris (France) pioneered the use of a special on-line platform “Energies’ Your Network” as a new, interactive communication tool that helped young participants from all over the world engage in straight talk-ing about a broad range of critical and sometimes controversial issues: Where is the energy market heading? How should all stakeholders work better to-gether to build an ethical and sustain-able future? What kind of leadership is needed to navigate this fast-changing environment? And much more besides. The plenaries gave young people the opportunity to discuss these issues on stage with senior colleagues. Fol-lowing the plenaries, workshops were held where young people had a chance to discuss solution to the industries’ challenges, contributing by present-ing creative ideas. In addition to this, during the event 1,200 young profes-sionals, students and experts from 110 countries got together to enhance their knowledge of the oil and gas industry and exchange their opinions at the’ knowledge Cafe’, areas exclusively earmarked for the purpose.

Youth in the Energy Future

Source: Special WPC Youth Magazine

HPCL, IIP, IDS, IOCL, Jubilant Life Sciences, Lanco Group, Linde Engineering India Pvt Ltd, Lurgi India Company Pvt Ltd, Moachem Additives, NRL, Porocel Industries and Uhde india Pvt Ltd.

The presentation on various topics were made by Speakers drawn from various national and international companies viz. BPCL, CPCB, IOCL, CPCL, EIL, Willacy Oil Ser-vices, NRL, AXENS India, Porocel, IIT Powai, Punj Lloyd and Technip India. The topics covered during the 2 days workshop were:

• Emissions Standards and Statutory Regulations for Efflu-ents Disposal; Challenges in meeting new Emission and Effluents Standards; Fugitive Emissions from Refinery Process Units; H2S Emission Control in Liquid Sulphur Transportation; Oily Sludge Disposal; Energy Efficiency Improvement; Recovery of Spent Catalysts; Valorization of Refinery Waste; Wet Air Oxidation; Tool for Waste Heat Management; Application of Exergy in Process Plant – A case study; CO2 Emission Control by Pinch Analysis

Carrying forward the legacy of the two previous Youth Forums, the 3rd WPC Youth Forum Fuel The Youth: Future Energy Leaders, held from 1-3 Novem-ber 2010, in New Delhi (India), on the sidelines of Petrotech-2010, a biennial International Oil & Gas Conference, was the first carbon neutral event in India an first such event held under the aegis of the WPC. The highlight of the forum was the debut of various compet-itive on-line events, the final of which was held live during the main Forum on 2nd Nov 2010. Competitions like “Corporate Ranneeti”- a contest aimed at achieving corporate supremacy in a fiercely-fought virtual business battle; “Energy Extempore”-interactive debate with the objective of stimulating office, college and informal arguments for-wards common platforms for finding so-lutions to the world’s energy problem’s;

“Mind Odyssey”- a free-wheel Creative Odyssey of seeking that one gem of an innovative idea that has the potential to revolutionize the Energy Industry and “Bezethics”- a High-on-Ethics event to present one’s comprehension of how a company can balance its social, ethical, environmental and profitmaking con-cerns, not only witnessed overwhelm-ing participation from across the globe but were instrumental in mainstream-ing several issues critical to industry through a unique approach. Competi-tion finalists were fully sponsored by the organizers for participation in the main Forum and attractive prizes were up for grabs by the competition winners. Further, the young panelists for theme sessions were on the stage during the Forum, who was identified through ex-tensive online discussions on the youth forum web portal.

Petrotech Activities

Lovraj Kumar Memorial Trust in association with Petrotech has organized the LKMT Workshop 2011 on the theme “Waste & Emissions Management in Process Industry” held on 17th-18th November 2011 at India Habitat Cen-tre, New Delhi. Mr B C Bora, Trustee, LKMT welcomed the August gathering and Mr A Soni, President (projects) Punj Lloyd & Trustee, LKMT apprised the participant and guests about the workshop. Keynote Address was deliv-ered by Mr R K Ghosh, Director (Refineries), Indian Oil Corporation Ltd and the workshop was inaugurated by Mr N M Borah, CMD, Oil India Ltd. Mr Borah appreciated the topic chosen for the Workshop. Mr Ashok Anand, Di-rector General, Petrotech proposed Vote of Thanks.

The workshop was attended by 68 participants from oil & gas industry viz. AXENS, BPCL, CHT, EIL, GAIL, HMEL,

LKMT Workshop 2011

Mr N M Borah CMD Oil India Limited addressing the august gathering during LKMT workshop 2011

As reflected by these past Forums, our aim is to continue organizing the WPC Youth Forums in different geographi-cal locations, providing an arena for youth to be heard, promoting a realis-tic image of the industry amongst the youth, and trying to attract more tal-ented young people to work towards a sustainable energy future. We stand for Fuelling the Youth and Energizing our Future and we encourage Innovation by Youth! So come and join next Youth Forum of WPC! Ms Nishi Vasudeva, Director (Marketing) HPCL was elect-ed Vice President WPC Youth General Forum during WPC Doha.

Ms Manisha Bhargava of IndianOil, was on the only Indian, on the Execu-tive Committee of WPC Doha, Youth Forum.

Audience during LKMT workshop

Seminar on “Hydrocarbon Industry Growth - Prospects & Challenges in North East”

December 8th – 9th 2011, Guwahati

Petrotech, in association with Indian Oil Corporation Lim-ited (Bongaigoan Refinery) has hosted the Seminar on Hydrocarbon Industry growth: Prospects & challenges in North East from 8th to 9th December, 2011 at NEDFI, Gu-wahati. The need for hosting this important seminar was steered by Shri A. Saran, Executive Director, IOCL (Bon-gaigaon Refinery). The seminar was inaugurated by Shri S Rath, Director (Operations) Oil India Limited. In his in-augural address, Shri Rath emphasized on the adoption of advanced technology in exploration of oil and gas in the mature oil fields of the North East. Shri M.K.Sinha, GM (Projects) of IOCL (Bongaigaon Refinery), earlier deliv-ered his keynote address and Shri N. Kumar, GM (HR) of IOCL (Bongaigaon Refinery), welcomed the august gath-ering. Mr. G. Sarpal, Secretary of Petrotech, proposed the vote of thanks.

Senior officials from IndianOil, Oil India Limited, ONGC and Numaligarh Refinery graced the occasion. The seminar was attended by ninety five (95) delegates of whom, thirty nine (39) were professors and lecturers from the premier educa-tional institutions of the North East and fifty six (56) practic-ing managers from the upstream and downstream oil industry.

Valedictory Session-Hydrocarbon Industry Growth- Prospects & Challenges in North East

Inaugural Session - Hydrocarbon Industry Growth- Prospects & Challenges in North East

Participants in a group with Mr S Rath, Director (Operations) Oil India Limited who inaugurated the seminar on Hydrocarbon Indus-try Growth Prospects and Challenges in North East

In the seminar growth of the Oil industry in the North East, the Global oil Scenario and its future outlook were discussed in details.

The presentation on the first day was on the upstream sector of the hydrocarbon value chain where presentations on Hy-drocarbon exploration and Tectonic evolution of the Assam & Arakan fold belt were discussed. The second session on the first day dealt with seismic data acquisition, emerging trends in Drilling technology, Reservoir characterization and on the natural gas scenario and its outlook.

The presentations on the second day of the seminar were on the downstream refining sector. Presentation on processing of heavy and sour crudes, hydrocarbon processing, catalyst selection, hydrogen production technologies, future of renew-able fuels, petroleum product pricing, supply chain optimiza-tion and on the future of shale gas exploration were made.

The glorious history of oil in the North East and the challenges anticipated by the industry in the coming years were deliber-ated in details. The seminar was a platform for academia and industry partnership for meeting the challenges of the future.

Petrotech Participated in WPC Doha

The 20th World Petroleum Congress -2011, was held at Doha between 4th -8th December. It was the first WPC in the middles east. The host company Qatar Petroleum organised it at its newly constructed National Convention Centre, in an exemplary manner. In fact this gigantic convention cen-

Inaugural Session of WPC Doha in progress



tre was inaugurated with the opening of WPC Doha. Over 5000 delegates from across the globe participated in this spectacular congress and exhibition.

Mr Ashok Anand DG, Petrotech and Mr Anand Kumar Director, Petrotech, participated in this 5 days events filled with some great plenary, Special, and technical sessions, besides hugely attended ministerial sessions.

The Indian contingent was lead by the Honourable Minis-ter of Petroleum and Natural Gas, who addressed the Indian

Ministerial session along with Shri G C Chaturvedi, Secre-tary, MOPNG, Mr Sudhir Vasudeva, CMD ONGC, Mr Raju, JS , MOPNG, and Mr D. Pathak, Director, MOPNG.

Shri Jaipal Reddy, Hon'ble Minister MOPNG Govt of India,Addressing the Ministerial Session at WPC Doha

The Canadian Minister and Deputy Minister of Energy, visited Indian Pavillion. Others in the Picture from R-L are Mr Sudhir Vasudeva, CMD ONGC and Chairman Petrotech, Anand Kumar Director Petrotech and Mr Sidharath Bannerjee GM CC IndianOil

Ministerial Session during the WPC 2011 at Doha

Mr Sudhir Vasudeva, CMD ONGC & Chairman Petrotech (4th from left with the President of WPC, Mr Renato Bertani Director General WPC (3rd from left), Dr Pierce Riemer (5th from left), Mr D K Sarraf MD ONGC Videsh Ltd (2nd from Left) Also seen are Mr Ashok Anand DG Petrotech (6th From left) and Mr Anand Kumar Director Petrotech (extreme left)

Hon'ble Minister of Energy, Alberta Canada in discussion with Mr Sudhir Vasudeva CMD ONGC in the Indian Pavillion-WPC Doha. Also seen Mr Ashok Anand DG Petrotech

CMD ONGC & Chairman Petrotech alongwith DG Petrotech having discussion with President and Director General WPC

During this WPC, Chairman Petrotech, Mr Sudhir Vasudeva, accompanied by Mr Ashok Anand, DG Petrotech and Mr Anand Kumar, Director Petrotech met Mr. Renato Bertani, President, WPC and Dr. Pierce Riemer, DG, WPC for exploring avenues for collaborative work.

Members of organising committee of Petrotech-2012 also participated in the WPC Doha event.

WPC Doha...

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petrotech journal december 2011

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