Barrels Of Crude Oil Research Articles

Volcano tsunamis and their effects on moored vessel safety: the 2022 Tonga event

Abstract. The explosion of the Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha'apai volcano on 15 January 2022 (Tonga 2022) was the origin of a volcano-meteorological tsunami (VMT) recorded worldwide. At a distance exceeding 10 000 km from the volcano and 15 h after its eruption, the moorings of a ship in the port of La Pampilla, Callao (Peru), failed, releasing over 11 000 barrels of crude oil. This study delves into the profound implications of the Tonga 2022 event, investigating whether it could have led to the breaking of the mooring system. We conducted a comprehensive analysis of this significant event, examining the frequency content of the time series recorded at tide gauges, DART (Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis) buoys, and barometers in the southern Pacific Ocean. Our findings revealed that the maximum energy of the spectra corresponds to the 120 min wave period off the coast of Peru, with the arrival time of these waves coinciding with the time of the accident in the port. We used a Boussinesq model to simulate the propagation of the volcano-meteorological tsunami from the source to the port in Peru to study the impact of those waves on the mooring system. We used the synthetic tsunami recorded in the port as input for the model that simulates mooring line loads based on the ship's degrees of freedom. The results suggest that the 120 min wave triggered by the VMT could significantly increase mooring stresses due to the resulting hydrodynamic effects, exceeding the minimum breaking load (MBL). We conclude that the propagation of the long wave period generated by the VMT caused overstresses in moored lines that triggered accidents in port environments. This event showed the need to prepare tsunami early warning systems and port authorities for detecting and managing VMTs induced by atmospheric acoustic waves. The work provides new insights into the far-reaching impacts of the Tonga 2022 tsunami.

Roles of Catalysts and Feedstock in Optimizing the Performance of Heavy Fraction Conversion Processes: Fluid Catalytic Cracking and Ebullated Bed Vacuum Residue Hydrocracking

Petroleum refining has been, is still, and is expected to remain in the next decades the main source of energy required to drive transport for mankind. The demand for automotive and aviation fuels has urged refiners to search for ways to extract more light oil products per barrel of crude oil. The heavy oil conversion processes of ebullated bed vacuum residue hydrocracking (EBVRHC) and fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) can assist refiners in their aim to produce more transportation fuels and feeds for petrochemistry from a ton of petroleum. However, a good understanding of the roles of feed quality and catalyst characteristics is needed to optimize the performance of both heavy oil conversion processes. Three knowledge discovery database techniques—intercriteria and regression analyses, and artificial neural networks—were used to evaluate the performance of commercial FCC and EBVRHC in processing 19 different heavy oils. Seven diverse FCC catalysts were assessed using a cascade and parallel fresh catalyst addition system in an EBVRHC unit. It was found that the vacuum residue conversion in the EBVRHC depended on feed reactivity, which, calculated on the basis of pilot plant tests, varied by 16.4%; the content of vacuum residue (VR) in the mixed EBVRHC unit feed (each 10% fluctuation in VR content leads to an alteration in VR conversion of 1.6%); the reaction temperature (a 1 °C deviation in reaction temperature is associated with a 0.8% shift in VR conversion); and the liquid hourly space velocity (0.01 h-1 change of LHSV leads to 0.85% conversion alteration). The vacuum gas oil conversion in the FCC unit was determined to correlate with feed crackability, which, calculated on the basis of pilot plant tests, varied by 8.2%, and the catalyst ΔCoke (each 0.03% ΔCoke increase reduces FCC conversion by 1%), which was unveiled to depend on FCC feed density and equilibrium FCC micro-activity. The developed correlations can be used to optimize the performance of FCC and EBVRHC units by selecting the appropriate feed slate and catalyst.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle for Pipeline Surveillance: A Review

Petroleum products being transported through pipelines can be easily targeted by economic and political saboteurs. Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) heralds a new technology on pipeline safety, surveillance, surveying mapping, assessment and safety for the oil and gas industry. With the advent of this technology, leaks, corrosion, third party interference and other faults leading to the loss of life, environmental pollution can be checked. This review highlights the state of the technology and benefits of UAV to the Nigeria oil and gas industry. The Nigeria oil and gas industry vested with over 2,300,000 barrels of crude oil daily production has over 9000km pipeline route which is prone to rupture from leaks, corrosion and vandalism. The industry will benefit from a flexible compatible and adaptable UAV platform with a multispectral and hyper spectral sensor for extensive safety, real-time imagery within a localized small to medium spatial scale, over larger expanse of space and time. The technology is adjured cheaper for inspection mission over traditional methods. Adoption of these technology would improve the environmental imprints of the oil and gas companies operating in the Niger Delta, and cases of pipeline vandalism and unrest might be lessened.

ANALYSIS OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF USING SOLAR SYSTEMS BASED ON PHOTOVOLTAIC MODULES AND SOLAR COLLECTORS FOR ENERGY SUPPLY OF BUDGET FACILITIES

This article analyzes the operation of a solar energy system installed in a higher education institution, consisting of four photovoltaic stations connected to the electrical grid for self-consumption, and a solar hot water system with collectors and a storage tank. The operation of the system was modeled using the RETScreen, T*SOL, and PV*SOL software programs, based on averaged climate data obtained from the "Zhuliany" weather station. The solar system is installed on the south-facing roof of the building and consists of 262 monocrystalline silicon photovoltaic modules of Trina Solar TSM-DE08M (II) type with a power of 370 W, installed at an angle of 30° to the horizon, and 8 Veissmann Vitosol 300-T SP3 vacuum tube collectors with a power of 1.3 kW installed at an angle of 35°. The placement of the solar elements was determined through modeling, considering their dimensions, the features of the roof structure, the placement of ventilation systems, and the shading of the roof surfaces by other elements of the building in Kyiv. As a result of energy modeling, it was determined that the amount of thermal energy obtained is 6.823 MWh/year, and the amount of electrical energy is -109.16 MWh/year, with a total inverter capacity of 95 kW, a traditional fuel replacement coefficient of 50% for the photovoltaic system and 75% for the solar system with collectors, payback periods of 4.3 years for the photovoltaic system, and 13 years for the hot water system when replacing electric boilers and 16 years when obtaining hot water from a district heating network. The reduction in harmful emissions is 45 tons/year of CO2, which is equivalent to 104.3 barrels of crude oil or 19,279 liters of high-octane gasoline or 15.5 tons of recycled waste. Based on the analysis of the data, it is recommended to install such systems in higher education budget institutions to reduce electricity or natural gas consumption and reduce harmful emissions into the environment.

Liquid-liquid equilibrium of CO2/bitumen and CO2/bitumen/ethyl acetate systems with application to diluted bitumen transportation

Bitumen transportation by pipelines requires dilution with solvents. These diluents are often expensive. Therefore, the utilization of liquid CO2 as a diluent to reduce or eliminate diluent consumption is of interest. However, there is limited data in the literature on the liquid-liquid equilibrium (LLE) of CO2 and bitumen. In this work, we report a new set of LLE data for MacKay River bitumen and liquid CO2 at ambient temperature. First, the LLE of bitumen/CO2 at various CO2 feed concentrations was studied. The density of light and heavy liquid phases, the viscosity of the heavy phase, and the heavy phase volume fraction were measured. It was shown that a CO2 feed concentration of 30 wt% is optimum for achieving maximum dissolution of CO2 in bitumen. Then, the effect of pressure on the LLE of bitumen/CO2 at a 30 wt% CO2 concentration was studied. The results revealed a significant reduction in bitumen viscosity from 300,000–1250 cP could be achieved at 21 °C. The results suggest that liquid CO2 can be utilized to reduce diluent consumption in pipeline transportation. The role of ethyl acetate (EA) as a co-solvent with CO2 was also examined. It was shown that the addition of EA to a mixture of bitumen/CO2 could further reduce the bitumen viscosity to satisfy the pipeline transportation criterion. The results reveal that CO2-assisted bitumen transportation in Canada can lead to the utilization of 0.16 Mt of CO2 daily, which is equivalent to a utilization potential of about 80 kg CO2/bbl of raw bitumen. The results also suggest a 73% reduction in fossil-based diluent usage, equivalent to ∼0.5 million barrels of crude oil.

Do the US president's tweets better predict oil prices? An empirical examination using long short-term memory networks

ABSTRACT The price of oil is highly complex to predict as it is impacted by global demand and supply, geopolitical events, and market sentiment. The accuracy of such predictions, however, has far-reaching implications for supply chain performance, portfolio management, and expected stock market returns. This paper contributes to the oil price prediction literature by evaluating the predictive impact of the US President's communication on Twitter, while benchmarking various Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques, including Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF), Word2Vec, Doc2Vec, Global Vectors for Word Representation (GloVe), and Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT). These techniques are combined with a deep neural network Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) architecture using a five-day lag for both the oil price and the textual Twitter data. The data was collected during the term of US President Donald Trump, resulting in 1449 days of crude oil price prediction and a total of 16,457 tweets. The study is validated for Brent and West Texas Intermediate blends, using the daily price of a barrel of crude oil as the target variable. The results confirm that including the US President's tweets significantly increases the predictive power of oil price prediction models, and that an LSTM architecture with BERT as NLP technique has the best performance.

Oil Pipelines Vandalism and Oil Theft: Security Threat to Nigerian Economy and Environment

Nigeria is a middle income country whose economy depends largely on crude and refined oil from its natural environment. A larger percentage of Nigeria economy survives mainly on the incomes from oil production. Over the years, there is recurrent dwindling oil revenue orchestrated by oil pipelines vandalism and oil theft in the environment. This is predominant in the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria. This menace has wreaked havoc on the Nigeria’s economy. Currently, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) claims the losses of 470,000 barrels per day of crude oil amounting to $700 million monthly due to oil theft. The disquiets of these menaces in the environment, which have posed serious threat to Nigeria’s economy, are addressed in this paper. This paper employed the doctrinal legal research methodology in evaluating the recurrent oil pipelines vandalism and oil theft causing a devastating economic meltdown. On this premise, this paper finds that persistent loss of barrels of crude oil and degradation of the environment are due to the lack of adequate security measures and proper enforcement of Oil Pipelines Act together with other relevant environmental laws. Based on the findings, this paper recommends a review of the Oil Pipelines Act, the establishment of a strong environmental security surveillance, and creation of a special court for accelerated prosecution of vandals. It concludes that this will mitigate the alarming economic meltdown of the Nigeria’s economy and promote a sustainable serene environment.

Economic viability and environmental sustainability of a grid-connected solar PV plant in Yaounde - Cameroon using RETScreen expert

The Cameroon power sector is currently undergoing a period of transition with government setting ambitions to increase the generation of clean electricity to meet the rapidly growing demand. A significant aspect of this transition is the phasing out of some thermal plants and supporting power generation with renewables. This can be achieved through the heavy exploitation of the renewable energy resources in the country. In line with this goal, the study assesses the feasibility of a 211.75 MW solar PV power plant in Yaounde, Cameroon using RETScreen Expert. The simulation showed an annual electricity production of 304,668.191 MWh with arrays mounted on a fixed axis. The model considered a debt ratio of 40%, debt interest rate of 12%, PV cost per kW of $1371 and a total system initial cost of $291,791,500. The annual revenue from exporting power to the grid was $36,560,183 and a capacity factor of 16.4%. The solar PV project was economically viable with a cost of energy (COE) of $75.43/MWh or $0.075/kWh and a gross annual GHG emission reduction potential of 61,004.5 tCO2 corresponding to 141,870.9 barrels of crude oil not used throughout the project life time. The benefit-cost ratio obtained in the simulation was 4.5 which implies that the project is profitable (ratio is greater than 1). The project break-even point of equity payback was 9.2 years while the simple payback was 8.9 years. The PV system had an IRR-assets of 7.4%, which was below the debt interest rate of Cameroonian financial institutions hence, the project will be attractive to investors. Also, the project risk and sensitivity analysis showed that a reduction in the project’s initial cost had a significant effect on the net present value (NPV) and the cost of energy production. Similarly, a rise in the grid electricity export reduced the cost of energy production when the confidence level was set to 90%.

Study on Emission and Performance of Diesel Engines by adding Nano Particles to the Blended Fuels

India has the world's second-largest population and the demand for transportation is increasing. However, our energy resources for car engines are limited. Every day, India consumed over 4.9 million barrels of crude oil. 85 percent of total oil consumption is imported from nations such as Iran, Saudi Arabia and Russia, among others. India is ranked third in the world. Despite our efforts to transition from internal combustion to electric power, India's electricity is heavily reliant on coal, which accounts for 55 percent of total production. As a result of this circumstance, jatropha biodiesel is being sought as a diesel engine alternative fuel. According to the Indian government, the country will spend about Rs 8 lakh crores on diesel and petrol imports in 2021, with this figure expected to rise to Rs 25 lakh crores in the next five years. The features of jatropha biodiesel with various percentages of blending with diesel fuel, such as B0, B5, B10, B15, B20, B30, B40, B50 and B100 are investigated in this work.

The Covid-19 Pandemic and the Impact of Passenger air Transport in Europe on Crude Oil Prices in Terms of Economic Security

The study presents a multidimensional comparative analysis of two dependent variables: the number of passengers transported by air in 28 European countries and the price of one barrel of crude oil in dollars. The conducted analysis shows that in the historical data concerning the identical periods (months) in both tested series, dependencies can be found. This allowed for the construction of a zero-one multiple regression model in order to confirm the impact of the number of passengers travelling by air on the price of one barrel of crude oil and describe this phenomenon with an analytical function.

Brief Oil Exposure Reduces Fitness in Wild Gulf of Mexico Mahi-Mahi (Coryphaena hippurus)

The Deepwater Horizon (DWH) disaster released 3.19 million barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) in 2010, overlapping the habitat of pelagic fish populations. Using mahi-mahi (Coryphaena hippurus)─a highly migratory marine teleost present in the GOM during the spill─as a model species, laboratory experiments demonstrate injuries to physiology and behavior following oil exposure. However, more than a decade postspill, impacts on wild populations remain unknown. To address this gap, we exposed wild mahi-mahi to crude oil or control conditions onboard a research vessel, collected fin clip samples, and tagged them with electronic tags prior to release into the GOM. We demonstrate profound effects on survival and reproduction in the wild. In addition to significant changes in gene expression profiles and predation mortality, we documented altered acceleration and habitat use in the first 8 days oil-exposed individuals were at liberty as well as a cessation of apparent spawning activity for at least 37 days. These data reveal that even a brief and low-dose exposure to crude oil impairs fitness in wild mahi-mahi. These findings offer new perspectives on the lasting impacts of the DWH blowout and provide insight about the impacts of future deep-sea oil spills.

The Conundrums of Illicit Crude Oil Refineries in Nigeria and Its Debilitating Effects on Nigeria’s Economy: A Legal Approach

Nigeria’s oil industry encounters crude oil theft in commercial quantities, which is often exported to neighbouring countries. This has occasioned a loss of revenue and has caused environmental pollution due to oil spillages. There is a need for a stringent legal framework to combat the menace caused by incessant crude oil thefts, pipeline vandalisation by militants, and inadequate maintenance of existing crude oil refineries. The study adopts doctrinal legal research methods and a conceptual approach with the consideration of primary and secondary sources of law, for instance, the Petroleum Industry Act 2021, the Nigeria Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI Act 2007, International Conventions, law textbooks and peer-reviewed journals. The justification for using the method was to establish the trustworthiness of the findings on illicit crude oil refineries. The findings reveal that the Nigerian government has lost more than 150,000 barrels of crude oil daily valued at USD six billion as a result of crude oil theft. This has reduced oil revenues, which ought to have added to the national treasury. The Petroleum Production and Distribution (Anti-Sabotage Act) 2007, which proscribes disruption of petroleum products in Nigeria, has not been diligently enforced. There is also an absence of a specific oil and gas legal framework criminalising crude oil theft. Section 3(e)(f)(iv) of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps Act only offers pipeline security as one of the functions of the corps, without distinctly stating the penalties to be imposed on those damaging crude oil pipelines. The study designs a hybrid model for the renovation of the country’s crude oil refineries. It also advocates the need to redefine legal regimes on illegal oil refineries by amending the Petroleum Industry Act to include specifically illegal oil refineries provision and to effectively criminalise crude oil theft. The implications of the main results are as follows: criminalising crude oil theft and pipeline vandalisation with vigorous punishments will serve as deterrence to others in the sector, increase revenues for the government and reduce environmental pollution.

A “Ticking Bomb” Named FSO Safer: Environmental Impact and State Responsibility under the View of International Law of the Sea

Oil spill is known as one of many common environmental disasters. Many oil spill disasters have cost countries and companies around the world huge amount of losses, and most importantly severe environmental damage which is not recoverable. Currently, one of Yemeni ships named FSO Safer is trapped and stranded around 5 miles from the outer coast of Yemen. The ship is carrying around 1 million barrels of crude oil in its storage, unfortunately the ship is currently in a poor condition and unstable, which may cause the largest super tanker oil spill disaster in the history, even worse than the Exxon Valdez disaster. Countries around the world including UN Members are looking for an immediate alternative to mitigate the disaster, as the Yemeni Government is currently in an armed conflict with the Houthi and have a very limited resource. This paper will analyze, which country will be affected by this imminent peril, who shall be responsible for the disaster and whether an exceptional circumstance that surrounds Yemen Government may discharge them for their responsibility as a state. This paper found that, this imminent disaster, will affect most of the countries located in the area of Red Sea, and the responsibility to deal with this imminent disaster are attached to all the affected countries under the UNCLOS 1982, including Yemen without any exception. An international movement initiated by the UN and Yemen Government itself must act immediately to prevent the disaster.

The Effect of Non-Linear Wave on Oil Spill Dispersion

On 31 March 2018, an oil spill accident polluted Balikpapan Bay. A failure occurred in a pipeline running from Penajam to Balikpapan Oil Refinery, East Kalimantan, Indonesia. Leaking pipeline caused the total estimated volume of leaked oil to approximate 44,000 Barrels of crude oil. MoTuM was used to simulate the dispersion of oil in the area. The modeling results indicate that a strong dynamic tidal current in the Bay controls the oil’s movement. The MoTuM software is suitable for spill combating, contingency plans, and backtracking. MoTuM is developed in Windows System, which integrates 3D Non-Orthogonal Boundary Fitted Ocean Hydrodynamics Model, Trajectory, Fates, Stochastic, Backtracking in Geographic Information System. This paper presents a further study of the effect of non-linear waves on the dispersion of oil in the Bay. The simulation results were validated by comparing the model with a satellite image. The agreement between the result of simulation and satellite image is excellent and shows that the non-linear wave is an essential factor for oil spill dispersion.

Data-driven workflow for the preemptive detection of excess water producing wells drilled in unconventional shales

The continuous rise in global energy demand requires the production of oil and gas from unconventional shale resources. One major concern for oil and gas producers has been the large volumes of produced water associated with the production of hydrocarbon from the shale resources. Yet, to the level of our knowledge, the source/s of the excess water produced in unconventional shale reservoirs has not been presented in a scientific publication. In this work, we developed a data-driven workflow for identifying potentially high water-producing wells drilled in unconventional shale formation and we identified geophysical signatures that explain the source of excess water production from the wells drilled in unconventional shale reservoirs. To that end, we applied unsupervised learning followed by supervised learning to process five conventional well logs, namely shallow and deep resistivity logs, density porosity logs, neutron porosity logs, and gamma ray logs, from wells drilled in two unconventional shale formations – Gulf Coast and Fort Worth. A novelty of our study is the use of clustering methods to generate pseudo-lithology prior to applying classification techniques for determining excess water producing wells. The data-driven workflow built using 23 wells in Gulf coast basin and 29 wells in Fort Worth basin. Fort Worth (FW) and Gulf Coast (GC) basins in the U.S. are highly productive shale basins that produce 380 million cubic feet of gas and 1.74 million barrels of crude oil every day. Additionally, based on permutation feature ranking and Kendall Tau's associated test, we identified the sources of excess water – highly water-wet and low thermally matured shale present at deep depths in Fort Worth basin, and absence of bituminous, pyrite-bearing shales at deep depths in Gulf Coast basin.

Using Smart Completion Technology to Control Water Coning Problems and Increase Oil Recovery in a Southern Iraqi Oilfield

This research describes the using of a new well completion technology system that enhance the homogeneous and heterogeneous reservoir deliverability and the production performance gained through a completion technique using Autonomous Inflow Control Valve (AICD) by self-decreasing/delaying water and gas progress and promoting increasing in oil production, therefore, equalizing the drawdown (∆P=Pi-Pwf) along the well and provide a dynamic water shut-off operation and significantly increasing the economic life of a well and therefore, reducing capital and operational expenditures for the field development.
 The research presents a production performance simulation results for a conventional and smart well completion technology in a horizontal well in a southern Iraqi oilfield for two stages during well life; early stage (till 2018) and late stage (till 2033). For early stage of well life, there was no significant difference in results when comparing between the conventional completion design and the smart completion design. In the contrast, the simulation results for the late life of the well showed that the well can produce for approximately 1056.7 barrel per day crude oil with a water-cut of 82 % at the year of 2033. The also revealed that the results showed that the cumulative oil production from the year of 2018 till 2050 will be 23 million barrel of crude oil and 44 million barrel of water when the well is completed with conventional completion design. When the completion design has been changed and equipped with autonomous inflow control devices (AICDs) technology and simulated the production performance by NETool Software. The simulation results showed that the oil production has been increased by 891 barrel per day (1947.3 barrel per day) and the water cut has reduced significantly in comparison with the conventional production completion by 17 % (65.4 %) at the year of 2033. The results revealed that the cumulative oil production from the year of 2018 till 2050 will be 31 million barrel of crude oil and 33 million barrel of water.
 It has been concluded, from the reservoir and production simulation, that the application of the technology is successful and showed a clear advantage of using Autonomous Inflow Control Device (AICD) that provides better water influx control profile.

ELECTRONIC WASTE: THE PAINS AND THE GAINS

This paper presents an assessment of e-waste with respect to rate of generation, composition, risk and recycling potential. Data were extracted from published works and further analysed to provide insight into these aspects of e-waste management. Results showed that Nigeria has one of the highest per capita rate of e-waste generation (7kg/capita/year) as a result of heavy reliance on used electrical and electronic equipment as well as export of e-waste by developed countries. Television sets and personal computers constitute 55% of the total e-waste generated. Lead and copper present very high risk because of their wide application in printed circuit boards (PCB) which are used in virtually all electrical and electronic equipment and cathode ray tubes of television sets and personal computer monitors. Other metals found in e-waste include mercury, cadmium and arsenic have been implicated in severe health problems such as cancer, lung disease, renal failure and brain damage. This paper further revealed that the risk associated with improper disposal of e-waste can be reduced by recycling and re-use. E-waste from mobile phone alone has an economic potential of ₤186,000,000 or N89,000,000,000 which is equivalent to 4,886,550 barrels of crude oil. Gold component of mobile phone account for 68% of this potential revenue.

Haematological, renal, and hepatic function changes among Rayong oil spill clean-up workers: a longitudinal study.

The Rayong oil spill incident of 2013 leaked over 50,000 barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Thailand. This study assessed trends and changes in the haematological, renal, and hepatic indices among the Rayong oil spill clean-up workers 5years after the spill. Haematological, renal, and hepatic indices measured for 570 oil spill clean-up workers at baseline and annually during 5-year follow-ups were analysed. Haemoglobin (Hb), haematocrit (Hct), white blood cell (WBC) count, red blood cell (RBC) count, and platelet count for haematological function, aspartate aminotransferase (AST) and alanine aminotransferase (ALT) for hepatic function, and creatinine (Cr) and blood urea nitrogen (BUN) for renal function were assessed. The longitudinal measures of haematological, renal and hepatic indices were analysed using analysis of variance for repeated measures. The generalised estimating equations (GEE) were used to assess trends of these indices and associated factors, including exposure level. Increasing trends were observed per year for WBC (0.52 ± 0.03 × 103 cells/μL), Cr (0.01 ± 0.00mg/dL), platelet (0.31 × 103 μL per year), and BUN (0.24 ± 0.03mg/dL). Decreasing trends of aspartate aminotransferase (AST) were observed (1.54 ± 0.21IU/L per year). Clean-up workers with high exposure to the oil spill had a significantly higher average of WBC and lower average of BUN than low-exposure and unknown-exposure workers. Gender and age were significantly associated with creatinine changes. Results of this study show the differences between baseline and follow-up haematological, renal, and hepatic indices and trends of these indices. The long-term changes in the indices in this study show worsening renal functions after oil spill and possibility of cardiovascular effects. These findings contribute to expanding knowledge on the long-term health effects of oil spills.

The Role of Biomethane from Sewage Sludge in the Energy Transition: Potentials and Barriers in the Arab Gulf States Power Sector

The increasing energy and water demands by the Arab Gulf states highlight the importance of sustainable use of energy resources. Wastewater sludge management for energy recovery creates an opportunity for sector integration for both wastewater treatment plants and renewable energy production. The objective of this study was to theoretically estimate the biomethane potential of wastewater sludge, together with identification of the role of biomethane in the region. The prediction of biomethane potential was based on the theoretical stoichiometry of biomethanation reactions, using the R-based package ‘Process Biogas Data and Predict Biogas Production’. The biomethane potential of sludge ranges between 232–334 × 106 m3, with a total heat-value up to 10.7 trillion BTUs annually. The produced biomethane can generate up to 1665 GWh of electric energy, an equivalent amount to the current levels of electricity generation from wind and solar power combined. The findings from the case study on Kuwait’s indicate that biomethane could displace 13 × 106 m3 of natural gas, or approximately 86,000 barrels of crude oil, while simultaneously reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 86% when compared to the base-scenario. Despite its potential, biomethane recovery in the region is hindered by technical-, economic-, and policy-based barriers.

Life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of crude oil and natural gas from the Delaware Basin

Development of the Permian Basin in recent years has disrupted the global trade of oil and gas. As of January 2020, it was producing more than five million barrels of oil and 20 billion cubic feet of gas per day, with the greatest growth coming from the Delaware Basin sub-play. In this investigation, we report the results of a novel process-based life cycle assessment (LCA) of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with oil and gas products from the Delaware Basin, employing extensive operational data including direct measurements of methane emissions. We find that if 1% of the gross gas produced is flared, then the upstream carbon intensity of crude oil is 19.5 kg CO2eq per barrel of crude oil - substantially lower than “global average” intensities reported in the literature. Moreover, the carbon intensities of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel refined from Delaware Basin crudes are approximately 10% less than the U.S. EPA and Department of Energy baselines when a 1% flaring rate is achieved. The life cycle GHG reductions are also a consequence of the physical and chemical properties of Delaware Basin crudes relative to the average crude blend for the U.S., resulting in reduced refinery GHG emissions. We also find that life cycle GHG emissions associated with natural gas from the Delaware Basin are similar to those reported for U.S. shale gas.