Energy Consumption Evaluation Method of Oil and Gas Pipeline

Abstract

Reducing energy consumption in oil and gas pipelines is a world-wide concern. In the past, China’s operation dispatchers and energy managers used the year-on-year growth method and period-on-period growth method to evaluate energy consumption. Energy consumption indicators focused on production energy consumption per turnover volume (kgce/(10t·km) for oil pipeline and kgce/(10Nm·km) for gas pipeline) as well as total energy consumption per turnover volume, power consumption per turnover volume, oil/gas consumption per turnover volume, etc. The main problem with these evaluation methods is that they are based on throughput. In general, when the throughput increases, the production energy consumption per turnover volume indicator will also increase. Because the practicability and reliability of year-on-year growth methods and period-on-period growth methods are often disputed, evaluation of energy consumption levels should be more objective, based on probability and statistics. According to historical energy consumption data from oil and gas pipelines, energy consumption is divided into five levels, very high, high, medium, low and very low. Furthermore, a key energy consumption index compares current energy consumption data to historical energy consumption data where operating conditions are similar to present operating conditions such as throughput, turnover volume and underground temperature. However, the key energy consumption index is not associated with throughput, so it is a more objective method for evaluating the current energy consumption level of oil and gas pipelines. This paper presents a corresponding calculation process based on the new energy consumption index and verifies its applicability. 1512 Pipelines 2013 © ASCE 2013