COURSE SUMMARY

Fundamentals of Refining and Supply Economics is designed to provide delegates with a thorough understanding of the technical principles of refining and its economic drivers. Through a combination of presentations and case studies, delegates will learn the principles of refinery operations and planning, the commercial aspects affecting crude selection and operation of the refinery. Delegates will participate in a refinery simulation whereby they select and purchase optimal crude cargoes, nominate finished product sales. The refineries are also exposed to the vagaries of the international oil market.

What you will learn

• The chemistry of crude oil, interpretation of a crude oil assay and their influence on the refinery operation
• The chemistry of the key refining processes
• The technologies, costs and optimisation of key refining processes
• Financial evaluation techniques as applied to project investment
• The workings of tanker markets and how freight is calculated
• Commercial aspects of crude oil selection
• Blending of intermediate streams into finished products
• The significance of finished product specifications to the refiner, shipper and end user
• The workings of the international oil trading markets

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?

• Personnel within the refining sector who have direct involvement in the technical, operational and commercial aspects of the refinery operation (e.g. planners, engineers and process operators)
• Personnel within the supply trading sector who have a direct involvement in refinery operations (e.g. supply planners and operators)
• New graduates to the refining and supply departments

COURSE CONTENTS

Combining 24 presentations, 7 exercises and an ongoing refining simulation with refining videos, the course contents include:

Introduction

• Terms used
• Oil markets
• Physical crude and product markets
• Paper markets

The chemistry of crude oil

• Crude oil characterisation
• Interpreting the crude oil assay

Overview of refining objectives

• Types of refinery

Crude Oil Selection and Valuation

• Gross Product Worth
• Netback and refiners margin

Tanker Markets

• Freight and Worldscale
• Tanker characteristics

Refining

Process Categories

Straight run

• Atmospheric and vacuum distillation

Quality improvement

• Distillate hydrotreating and hydrofining
• Residue desulphurisation
• Catalytic reforming
• Isomerisation
• Alkylation

Yield shifting

• Visbreaking
• Catalytic cracking
• Hydrocracking
• Coking

Others process

• Gas to liquids
• Hydrogen plants
• Sulphur, steam and power generation

Process Costs

Process Optimisation

Refinery Planning and scheduling using the LP model

Products

• Gasoline
• Diesel gasoil, heating oil,
• Jet kerosene, DPK
• Residual fuel oil
• Lubes, bitumen and LPG
• Bio fuels

Process stream selection

Blending and additives

International specifications and their significance

FACULTY

Dr Ian Holdaway

TESTIMONIALS

“I will refer this course to my colleagues ” S.P., Shell Canada Energy