Low oil price and the demise of the once productive oil and gas industry had grabbed headlines worldwide. One thing which most people might miss out is the fact that one particular segment of the oil and gas industry is running profitable and all the more with lower crude price, and that is the refineries.

Refineries had been running profits, and for major oil and gas companies, one high ranking executive is claiming that the business is effectively subsidizing their upstream SBU. To have an effective and efficient refineries, several separate systems will need to be put in place to which collectively are known as refinery management system and they are:

  • Administration Management System
  • Asset Management System
  • Environment, Safety and Health Management System
  • Hydrocarbon Management System

The Administration Management System mostly governs business processes such as in the area of finance, corporate services, contracts, procurement, HR Management, IT, Legal and Communications alike. It covers functions such as legal and compliance, budgeting and cash management, accounting and governing of information system.

On the other hand, Asset Management System deals with ensuring that physical mechanical assets are built and properly maintained and operated with respective laws, regulations and standards. It specifies ways to achieve this by building an inspection system such as risk-based inspection and condition monitoring program in order to detect indication to prevent and to ensure refinery integrity. It consists of many work procedures and instructions based on industry best practices and is usually handled in a dedicated department called integrity and reliability department to undertake monitoring, inspection, materials and corrosion and rotating equipment of the physical process.

Top refineries make it a point that HSE is equally important as the efficiency of the processes in the production line as the quality of the end products. It is usually designed to ensure the smooth running of the emergency response and security management system too.

The other significant system of the whole Refinery Management System is the Hydrocarbon Management System. It governs the supply chain system, logistics and feed stocks, continuous improvement of the production processes and the quality and testing of the end products. The feedstock blend as is usually known, is based on a computed algorithm and is continually adjusted and perfected in order to arrive at a figure to achieve optimal crude feedstock decision. It utilizes information such as future crude price and forecast petrochemical products to arrive at the optimal feedstock figure and is based on a team of economist analysis.

EditorEnergyPetrochemicalsdownstream,energy,gas,oil,petrochemical,refineryLow oil price and the demise of the once productive oil and gas industry had grabbed headlines worldwide. One thing which most people might miss out is the fact that one particular segment of the oil and gas industry is running profitable and all the more with lower crude...Your Industries Online