Oil and Gas Industry

One reason oil and gas companies adopt a standard cost coding system is to facilitate benchmarking. NORSOK Z-014 Standard Cost Coding System (SCCS) is an example of this kind of system. This paper describes a set of issues found in a project that attempted to adopt this standard. These were issues whose analysis revealed problems with the standard’s fundamental structure. Further analysis showed that these types of problems are well understood outside the project controls community and resolvable using a classification technique technically known as ‘facets’. The paper provides examples of these issues and indicates how they can be resolved. It also describes the systematic modernization approach adopted by the project to resolve the issues throughout the standard. The aim of this paper is to introduce to the project controls community an understanding of the importance of these issues for raising the quality of their data and the new techniques to provide improved foundations for standard cost coding systems for the oil and gas industry in the 21stCentury.

Produced water is the largest waste stream generated in oil and gas industries. It is a mixture of different organic and inorganic compounds. Due to the increasing volume of waste all over the world in the current decade, the outcome and effect of discharging produced water on the environment has lately become a significant issue of environmental concern. Produced water is conventionally treated through different physical, chemical, and biological methods. In offshore platforms because of space constraints, compact physical and chemical systems are used. However, current technologies cannot remove small-suspended oil particles and dissolved elements. Besides, many chemical treatments, whose initial and/or running cost are high and produce hazardous sludge. In onshore facilities, biological pretreatment of oily wastewater can be a cost-effective and environmental friendly method. As high salt concentration and variations of influent characteristics have direct influence on the turbidity of the effluent, it is appropriate to incorporate a physical treatment, e.g., membrane to refine the final effluent. For these reasons, major research efforts in the future could focus on the optimization of current technologies and use of combined physico-chemical and/or biological treatment of produced water in order to comply with reuse and discharge limits.

link: doi:10.1016/j.jhazmat.2009.05.044

This article introduces the research of virtual
reality technologies used in the oil and gas industry. The
industry is so vast that the technologies used there are
radically different. Various aspects of oil and gas production
were considered, such as geodata modeling, real-time
production visualization technology. The problems and
possible solutions for translating CAD models into virtual
reality applications are indicated. Also, using virtual reality
technology, can increase the speed of work and reduce the
risk of errors, which is extremely important in the oil and
gas industry. As well as the benefits of learning and using
virtual reality to improve learning and understanding of
production processes.

Oil and gas field wastewater or produced water is a significant waste stream in the oil and gas industries. In this study, the performance of a membrane sequencing batch reactor (MSBR) and membrane sequencing batch reactor/reverse osmosis (MSBR/RO) process treating produced wastewater were investigated and compared. The MSBR was operated in different hydraulic residence time (HRT) of 8, 20 and 44 h. Operation results showed that for a HRT of 20 h, the combined process effluent chemical oxygen demand (COD), total organic carbon (TOC) and oil and grease (O&G) removal efficiencies were 90.9%, 92% and 91.5%, respectively. The MSBR effluent concentration levels met the required standard for oil well re-injection. The RO treatment reduced the salt and organic contents to acceptable levels for irrigation and different industrial re-use. Foulant biopsy demonstrated that the fouling on the membrane surface was mainly due to inorganic (salts) and organic (microorganisms and their products, hydrocarbon constituents) matters.

link: doi:10.1016/j.biortech.2010.04.005