Environment & Safety
HP Insight: Why build when you can outsource more economically?
December's Special Report focuses on the "lack luster" plant area – utilities. This processing area is too often treated as a "stepchild." However, if problems arise with the supply of utilities ..
HPIn SHE: Unit processes
Earlier, I was jotting down notes for this column while eating a greasy, undercooked breakfast, in an unheated, alcohol-free, departure lounge, waiting to board an aircraft, which had its last full se..
HP Insight: Perception becomes reality
U.S. refiners are facing a hostile environment. Great animosity is directed toward their final product – gasoline. Especially in California, consumers are distressed with potential health effects..
HPIn SHE: Lessons too late for the learning?
As we sang at Woodstock, "It's a lesson too late for the learning, made of sand, made of sand..." (If you don't know this song or have never heard of Woodstock, ask your parents or the old, white-hair..
HP Insight: If we only had a simple solution
If refiners thought that they were busy before, they must really brace themselves now. More changes and environmentally driven issues are ahead in the next few years. This is the underlying message fr..
HPIn SHE: Not the only game in town
Few situations are worse for the consultant than the client with preconceived ideas. I've had one of these recently, and it reminded me of a similar case a few years ago. In the recent case, the clien..
HP Insight: More disappointments in 1999
Findings by EPA's Blue Ribbon Panel on oxygenates offer refiners a mixed bag of options. This panel met over a six-month period to investigate air quality benefits and water quality concerns associate..
HPIn SHE: Sense and susceptibility*
I've just come to the end of a major analysis1 of Year 2000 (Y2K) problems affecting the oil and gas industries in the Ex-communist Countries of Eastern and Central Europe (ECECE). Actually, we intend..
HPIn SHE: Orphan Annies
Recently, I paid a return visit to a site where I had conducted an intensive hazard study about five years previously. Sadly, not much had changed. Security had improved; they now had a guard on the b..
HP Insight: Catalysts – They just keep things reacting
Much of the HPI's processing improvements can be attributed to catalyst innovations. They are drivers that not only affect processing methodologies; they enable creating and modifying end-product tech..
- Refinery closures may lead to higher gasoline prices on the U.S. West Coast 7/9
- INNIO Group, Gföllner Group establish JV, offering power solutions to the U.S. market 7/9
- Using lightning to make ammonia out of thin air 7/9
- bp sells 300 Dutch petrol stations to Catom 7/9
- U.S. crude stockpiles increase, gasoline falls on July 4 driving demand 7/9
- Nigeria's Dangote refinery plans 1.6-MMbbl fuel storage tanks in Namibia 7/9
