Gas Industry Facilities Research Articles

Quality Standards in Construction of Oil and Gas Industry Facilities

Quality Standards in Construction of Oil and Gas Industry Facilities

Analysis of the Possibilities of Energy Supply to Consumers in Cold Conditions During Large-Scale Emergency Installations in the Gas Industry

The article presents the main components of the methodological approach to the analysis of the possibilities of supplying final types of energy to consumers in the event of a loss of performance of critical facilities of the Russian gas industry in conditions of cooling in the territories of the federal districts. The principle of choosing a territorial section for analyzing the situation with a simultaneous increase in demand for fuel and energy resources is described. An algorithm for conducting research is given. Research is carried out by modeling the work of the country’s fuel and energy complex during the period of the average day of January in the conditions of a peak-increasing demand for thermal energy in the territories of federal districts. At the same time, the cooling is modeled in turn for each of the federal districts in the zone of operation of the Unified Gas Supply System of Russia. An analysis of the possibilities of meeting the demand for final types of energy in the constituent entities of the Russian Federation is carried out for all key scenarios of cooling and loss of efficiency of critical gas industry facilities. The principles of modeling the situation with the supply of final types of energy to consumers in these situations are shown. The most vulnerable regions under the analyzed conditions are identified. The conclusion is made about the need for a balanced approach to determining the optimal degree of dominance of natural gas in the fuel and energy balance of the regions, taking into account the existing opportunities for its supply in the conditions of large-scale emergencies in the gas industry.

Release of Radioactive Particles to the Environment.

When environmental impact and risks associated with radioactive contamination of ecosystems are assessed, the source term and deposition must be linked to ecosystem transfer, biological uptake and effects in exposed organisms. Thus, a well-defined source term is the starting point for transport, dose, impact and risk models. After the Chornobyl accident, 3-4 tons of spent nuclear fuel were released and radioactive particles were important ingrediencies of the actual source term. As Chornobyl particles were observed in many European countries, some scientists suggested that radioactive particles were "a peculiarity of the Chornobyl accident." In contrast, research over the years has shown that a major fraction of refractory elements such as uranium (U) and plutonium (Pu) released to the environment has been released as particles following a series of past events such as nuclear weapons tests, non-criticality accidents involving nuclear weapons, military use of depleted uranium ammunition, and nuclear reactor accidents. Radioactive particles and colloids have also been observed in discharges from nuclear installations to rivers or to regional seas and are associated with nuclear waste dumped at sea. Furthermore, radioactive particles have been identified at uranium mining and tailing sites as well as at other NORM sites such as phosphate or oil and gas industrial facilities. Research has also demonstrated that particle characteristics such as elemental composition depend on the emitting source, while characteristics such as size distribution, structure, and oxidation state influencing ecosystem transfer will also depend on the release scenarios. Thus, access to advanced particle characteristic techniques is essential within radioecology. After deposition, localized heterogeneities such as particles will be unevenly distributed in the environment. Thus, inventories can be underestimated, and impact and risk assessments of particle contaminated areas may suffer from unacceptable large uncertainties if radioactive particles are ignored. The present paper will focus on key sources contributing to the release of radioactive particles to the environments, as well as linking particle characteristics to ecosystem behavior and potential biological effects.

Взрывная дегазация Земли на полуострове Ямал и прилегающей акватории Карского моря

Remote sensing data from space and using UAVs make it possible to solve a wide range of tasks related to the study of Earth degassing processes in the Arctic. For the first time, via comprehensive aerospace research on the Yamal Peninsula, we have discovered 4992 zones of gas blowouts (explosions) in the form of craters (pockmarks) at the bottom of 3551 thermokarst lakes and 16 rivers. In addition, we have identified another 669 zones of explosive degassing in the coastal zones of the Kara Sea, mainly in gulfs, estuaries and bays. Taking into account the Yugorsky Peninsula and Bely Island, we have detected 6022 explosive degassing zones in the studying region, including 905 ones offshore. We have proved previously made conclusions that the Neytinsko-Seyakhinsky and Sabetta districts are the most gas-explosive. It is substantiated that possible intense natural degassing of the Earth, especially occurring in the process of degradation of subaquatic permafrost and dissociation of gas hydrates, can radically change the elastic-strength properties of bottom soil, while its saturation with gas can disrupt conditions for the construction of various objects, including underwater gas pipelines. Widespread gas blowouts in the north of Western Siberia with the formation of craters on land and offshore can lead to emergencies and even disasters at oil and gas industrial facilities and to fires in the tundra.

Моделирование ожидаемого предотвращенного ущерба в энергетике. Часть 1. Детерминированный подход

Inspection control and supervisory activities are one of the important mechanisms of proactive industrial safety. Corporate control ensures early detection of security violations and their prompt elimination to prevent accidents. The expected prevented damage at hazardous production facilities is considered one of the efficiency factors of inspection activities. In order to assess the expected prevented damage (direct or indirect), the number of expected incidents and damage for each event must be calculated. An approach to the assessment of the number of prevented events based on the pyramid of incidents (Heinrich’s pyramid, Berd’s pyramid) by supplementing it with the level of detected violations has been proposed. The number of prevented incidents can be assessed within the framework of deterministic and scholastic approaches. The study focuses mainly on building and analysis of the ratio of the number of incidents between different levels of the pyramid within the framework of the deterministic approach. The accident statistics at oil and gas industry facilities has been analyzed; Heinrich’s hypothesis regarding the type of dependence between the pyramid levels has been tested; and coefficients of the injury rate pyramid have been determined. To find the final coefficients of the improved pyramid of an oil and gas company, the method of coefficient calculation with accumulations for each year has been chosen. It has been demonstrated that traditional values of coefficients of Heinrich’s pyramid and those obtained as a result of calculations do not comply, which can be explained by the significant difference in industrial technologies and efficiency of occupational safety measures as of today and at the moment of initial building of Heinrich’s pyramid. Based on the regression analysis and other forecasting methods (the Holt method, the Brown exponential smoothing method, the ARIMA model, and the moving average extrapolation method), modeling and forecasting injury rate factors have been conducted. The comparative analysis of methods to forecast the number of accidents has been carried out. It has been shown that it is advisable to apply the linear regression model to predict injury rates.

ОСОБО ОХРАНЯЕМЫЕ ПРИРОДНЫЕ ТЕРРИТОРИИ В КОНТЕКСТЕ ГОРОДСКОГО ПЛАНИРОВАНИЯ ГОРОДА ПЕРМИ: ФУНКЦИИ И ПРОБЛЕМЫ

This article is a study using GIS technologies aimed at assessing and analyzing changes in the areas of types of plant communities under the influence of oil and gas industry facilities on the island. Sakhalin.
 Purpose (Object): The purpose of this study is to assess the degree of change in the areas of types of plant communities under the influence of oil and gas indus-try facilities on the island. Sakhalin.
 Methods: Methodology for assessing changes in the areas of plant communi-ties under the influence of oil and gas industry facilities on the island. Sakhalin in-cludes 7 stages, consisting of spatial reference of a raster image (vegetation map of the island) to a base map, as well as the subsequent creation of polygonal objects based on the received data and conducting spatial analysis in ArcGIS software. The final stage involves determining the degree of change using specified criteria.
 Findings: Most of the types of plant communities on Sakhalin Island belong to the conditionally unmodified class with the percentage of the territory occupied by oil and gas industry facilities less than 0.5%. We assigned the following types of plant communities to this class: white birch-larch grass-shrub forests in place of dark coniferous forests (0.00%); reed grass communities in place of green moss and grassy dark coniferous forests (0.17%); etc. The weakly modified class in-cludes 4 types of communities: larch mid-taiga lichen forests with dwarf cedar (0.75%); thickets of wild rosemary in place of larch green moss-ledum forests (0.74%); larch mid-taiga green moss-ledum forests (0.69%); thickets of dwarf ce-dar and alder (0.59%). None of the existing types of plant communities on Sakhalin Island belongs to the moderately or highly modified class, since the area of land occupied by oil and gas industry facilities does not exceed 2%.
 Conclusions: Assessment of the degree of change in areas occupied by various types of plant communities under the influence of oil and gas industry facilities on the island. Sakhalin makes it possible to determine the most disturbed types of communities and classify them according to the degree of change.
 This information is useful in view of the relevance of the issue of environmental pollution by oil and gas industry facilities, as well as from the point of view of the possibility of developing measures to protect and protect the environment. In addi-tion, based on the data obtained, it is possible to predict further changes in the de-velopment of Sakhalin shelf projects and the construction of new onshore infra-structure.

Fire-Extinguishing Dibromomethane Mixtures with Fluorinated Alkanes for Fire and Explosion Protection of Oil and Gas Industry Facilities

The high fire hazard level is specific to the oil and gas industry due to the circulation of large volumes of flammable gases and liquids. To ensure fire protection at the oil and gas industry facilities, automated gaseous fire extinguishing is widely used. The main fire-extinguishing agents in automated gaseous fire-extinguishing systems are refrigerants HFC 23, 125, 227еа, FC 318c, and fluorinated ketone FK 5-1-12. Upon the adoption of the international agreements on combating global warming, most fluorinated gaseous fire-extinguishing agents currently used for fire extinguishing fell under restrictions. The article indicates the importance of refrigerants HFC 23, 125, 227еа, and FC 318c, whose production volume must be reduced by 85 % by 2036 to ensure the required level of fire and explosion protection of oil and gas industry facilities. A method to reduce the volumes of used fluorinated alkanes by producing highly efficient fire-extinguishing mixtures, one of the components of which is an agent of high global warming potential (GWP) and the other is a chemical compound with a short atmospheric lifetime, has been proposed. Dibromomethane, which fully meets the latest environmental requirements, is to be considered a short-lived component. Based on the well-known kinetic data, the rates of elementary chemical reactions generated in the flame of the methane-oxygen mixture when contacting with refrigerants HFC 23, 227еа, and dibromomethane, have been calculated and compared. The efficiency of using dibromomethane to increase the fire-extinguishing efficiency of refrigerants HFC 23 and 227еа has been substantiated. An experimental determination of the minimum fire-extinguishing efficiency of the generated mixed compositions is conducted to confirm the correctness of theoretical calculations. The obtained mixed gaseous fire-extinguishing agents enable the reduction of the volume of high global warming potential refrigerants by 1.5–2 times. It has been also demonstrated that the obtained mixed compositions have no toxic impact on a human.

Опыт внедрения тренажерных комплексов на объектах газовой промышленности территориально-производственного предприятия «Ямалнефтегаз»

Relevance of the development of computer simulator complexes, their advantages, disadvantages, as well as the experience of their implementation at gas industry facilities on the example of computer simulator complexes for checking emergency protection of technological facilities of the territorial production enterprise «Yamalneftegaz» are considered. Complexity of the production technologies and process control, the risks of accidents, the huge industrial and environmental risk in the management of oil and gas facilities, as well as the significant weight of operator control errors in the total number of causes of accidents determine the relevance of efficient personnel training. The use of computer simulators can significantly improve the skills of operational personnel and reduce the risks of accidents at the oil and gas sector enterprises. Simulators give operators and dispatchers the opportunity to learn in practice how to make the right decisions in emergency situations and work with modern process control systems, which in turn can significantly improve fire and industrial safety, the safety of technological equipment and even save human lives. In general, the article emphasizes the importance of using computer simulators in the training of operational personnel at oil and gas enterprises, which can help reduce the risks of accidents and increase the level of industrial safety.

Performance Assessment of Molecular Sieves for Sulfur Recovery Unit Tail Gas Treating

Due to stricter worldwide environmental mandates on SO2 emission from oil and gas industrial facilities, the modified Claus process, which is the primary tool for reducing emission of SO2 into the atmosphere in these facilities, has undergone a lot of innovative changes during the past decades. An example of such innovation is the addition of what is called tail gas treating (TGT) technologies. Currently, advanced TGT technologies ensure that gas plants and refineries emit less than 0.01% (v/v) of the sulfur species that enter into the sulfur recovery units; they commonly use absorption-based processes to separate sulfur species from the tail gas. Because of this requirement, TGT technologies are expensive. This paper reports the data that were obtained from bench-scale tests that were carried out to assess the feasibility of using commercially available adsorbents for the process that is described in the patent, Two-Stage Adsorption Process for Claus Tail Gas Treatment, US Patent No.10662061. In one of the embodiments of this process, the tail gas is treated in two steps. It is first dehydrated by 3A molecular sieves and then by 5A molecular sieves to remove H2S. The separation in the second step will ensure the presence of a rich H2S-laden stream that is ready for routing to the thermal reactor of the modified Claus process. The data collected in this study indicate the following: (1) Commercial molecular sieves can be used for cost-effective tail gas treatment of natural gas plants’ and refineries’ sulfur recovery units. (2) This cost-effectiveness of such use can be valid when molecular sieve material selection is as described in US Patent No.10662061, “Two-Stage Adsorption Process for Claus Tail Gas Treatment”. (3) Adsorption-based tail gas treatment is advantageous since it results in enabling the global oil and gas industry to virtually eliminate all SO2 emissions from its facilities.

Asean Guidelines for Special Economic Zones (SEZs) Development and Collaboration: A Study of SEZ Arun Lhokseumawe, Aceh- Indonesia

The establishment of Special Economic Zones (SEZ) Lhokseumawe, Aceh province in 2017, has accelerated economic development in post-conflict situation in Aceh province, Indonesia. This area is supported by the existence of former Arun gas industry facilities which was ended in 2014. This paper investigates the meaning, the extent to which the Asean Guidelines for SEZ has been applied and contributed to accelerate investment in SEZ Arun Lhokseumawe, along with progresses and challenges ahead. This is essential for sustainable peace post peace agreement(MoU) Helsinki. Using doctrinal approach and secondary data, this paper found that SEZ Arun Lhokseumawe has partly adopted the Asean Guideline for SEZ, in terms of a clear development strategy, clarification and separation of roles and responsibility, delegation of authority, building strong institutional capacities, and increasing Asean SEZ cooperation. Therefore, little progress of this SEZ become questionable. Current constraint of asset ownership, the absence of independent management has advised to have Aceh Qanun on the Administrator Institution of the SEZ Arun Lhokseumawe. The Qanun is expected to become a legal umbrella and technical guidance in the effective management of the SEZ Arun Lhokseumawe.

Environmental Transparency Rating of Oil and Gas Companies Operating in the Arctic: 2014—2021

The article focuses on identifying the dynamics of indicators and criteria for the rating of environmental transparency of oil and gas industry facilities in the Russian Arctic for 2014—2021. The authors managed to identify the general and differentiated dynamics of greening of the Arctic oil and gas sector enterprise in three sections: managerial, operational and informational. The leaders of the environmental rating have been identified — Sakhalin Energy (Sakhalin-2), LUKOIL, Zarubezhneft.

Employee scheduling and maintenance planning for safety systems at the remotely located oil and gas industrial facilities

Abstract The safety of operations is vital in any process in the oil and gas sector, especially given that increasingly more hydrocarbon reserves are discovered in non-conventional remote and Arctic locations. Safety systems are designed as a part of a complex IT system for process control. The design of these systems is conducted in the form of an engineering project. This research presents a decision-making framework to facilitate formulating clear and comprehensive recommendations for the requirements specification developed for the safety systems. The contribution of this research to the strategic planning area of IT solutions for hazardous industrial facilities is integrating the problems of designing a safety system, planning its maintenance, and scheduling the employees to conduct the required maintenance. With this joint decision-making, it is possible to explore trade-offs between investments into the systems’ complexity and workforce-related expenditures throughout the solution’s lifecycle. The reliability modelling is conducted with the help of Markov analysis. The multi-objective decision-making framework is employed to deduce straightforward requirements to the safety system design, maintenance strategy, and workforce organisation. This research is relevant to managing the petroleum sector engineering projects with regard to the design of technological solutions.

Modeling and economic optimization of an industrial site for natural gas processing: A nonlinear optimization approach

In this work an integrated simulation-optimization model to determine the optimal economic operating point of an industrial site for natural gas processing with multiple process units and feedstock. Natural gas industrial facilities have the intrinsic characteristic of dealing with dynamic scenarios, with no control over raw inlet gas, which might lead the plant to suboptimal conditions. In this context, an integrated simulation-optimization framework was proposed, using Aspen HYSYS for process simulation, Python for optimization and Microsoft Excel as data transfer interface. Process model comprises three slug catchers, five gas processing units, three liquid fractionating units, compression systems, auxiliary equipment and gas treating units. The optimization problem was formulated based on the maximum business profit, incorporating, as penalty functions, inequality constraints: product specifications, logistic bottlenecks and plant physical limits. Optimization model was validated against actual data from an industrial facility responsible for processing over one quarter of all natural gas used in Brazil. The nonlinear programming was successfully executed using Particle Swarm Optimization method in series with Nelder-Mead flexible polyhedron for ten normalized decision variables indicating a potential increase of 7.3 % in variable profit, as well as the existence of local minima in the optimization space.

Связь причин пожаров, нормативных требований и эффективности пожарного надзора в нефтегазовой отрасли Российской Федерации

At the facilities of oil and gas industry for achieving the results in compliance with the fire safety standards it is required to have its own regulatory requirements adapted to the new conditions. Such concepts as the efficiency of regulations in the field of fire safety, the fire situation and its key indicators, and federal state fire supervision are becoming important. The most common causes of fires at oil refineries are established. The relevance of determining the violations that cause fires and people die is noted. Based on the conclusions about the causes of the fire available in the conclusions of experts, an analysis of the fire that occurred at the Ufa oil refinery with the death of people was carried out. A new approach to the use of expert conclusions, in accordance with regulatory provisions, is noted. Measures were developed to improve departmental fire safety regulations at the oil refineries facilities. The importance is noted related to establishing a connection between the true causes of fires at oil refineries and regulatory requirements in regulatory legal acts and regulatory documents of the Russian Federation, as well as in the technological regulations of production facilities. The analysis was carried out concerning the current regulations and the violations recorded in them in the field of fire safety at oil refineries. A new approach to conducting inspections of oil and gas industry facilities is proposed considering the conclusions presented in the acts of investigation of incidents of oil refineries. It is proposed to develop new regulations for oil and gas industry enterprises based on the true causes of fires.

Features of extinguishing fires in the oil and gas industry by feeding foam into a layer of flammable liquid (in Kazakh language)

This article describes a method for extinguishing fires of oil and petroleum products in vertical steel tanks by feeding foam to form a low-layer film directly into the fuel layer at the bottom of the tank. The problems of extinguishing fires in tanks with a floating roof or on a pontoon when extinguishing fires in a storey way are briefly described. The main problems: contamination of the foam with oil and petroleum products, the time of lifting the foam to the surface of the tank, the appearance of “pockets” inaccessible for extinguishing, etc. The results of studies of the main modern systems for ensuring fire safety of oil and gas industry facilities, such as: transportation, processing and storage, are shown. The results of the study of the fire extinguishing process with film-forming foam in tanks, as well as the study of the properties of fluorosynthetic foams, are described. Examples of combined fire safety systems on pontoon tanks are also given.

Pipeline for complex actions recognition in video surveillance systems

The development of intelligent video surveillance systems is an area of active research, presenting solutions for use in specific environments. In addition, several problems have been formulated that need to be addressed. This is the problem of recognizing complex actions, which consist of sequences of elementary actions and, as a rule, are difficult to classify from a single frame of a video recording. The present study is devoted to solving the problem of recognizing complex actions on video recordings. The aim of the work is to develop a pipeline for recognizing complex actions that an observed object performs on video recordings. The novelty of the work lies in the approach to action modeling using sequences of elementary actions and a combination of neural networks and stochastic models. The proposed solution can be used to develop intelligent video surveillance systems to ensure security at production facilities, including oil and gas industry facilities. We analyzed video recordings of objects performing various actions. The features describing complex actions and their properties are singled out. The problem of recognition of complex actions represented by a sequence of elementary actions is formulated. As a result, we developed a pipeline implements a combined approach. Elementary actions are described using a skeletal model in graphical form. Each elementary action is recognized using a convolutional neural network, then complex actions are modeled using a hidden Markov model. The developed pipeline was tested on videos of students, whose actions were divided into two categories: cheating and ordinary actions. As a result of the experiments, the classification accuracy of elementary actions was 0.69 according to the accuracy metric, the accuracy of the binary classification of complex actions was 0.71. In addition, the constraints of the developed pipeline were indicated and further ways of enhancing the applied approaches were highlighted, in particular, the study of noise immunity.

A comparative analysis of the requirements of Russia and the United States to the fire resistance of building structures of oil refineries and petrochemical plants

Introduction. Currently, national standards and codes of practice contain deterministic values of the fire resistance of building structures of facilities of the Russian fuel and energy complex (FEC), while a probabilistic approach to determining their fire resistance is not specified in the Russian regulatory documents. The methodology of the probabilistic approach to the fire resistance of structures is detailed in API 2218 “Fireproofing Practices in Petroleum and Petrochemical Processing Plants”, developed by the American Petroleum Institute.Methods. A comparative analysis of the Russian regulatory documents on fire safety and API 2218 in terms of the established concepts of fireproofing and requirements for the fire resistance limits of building structures of oil and gas industry facilities, is carried out.Results. It was established that the Russian Federation has no regulatory documents establishing methods based on the probabilistic approach, including determination of the required fire resistance limits and points of application of fire-resistant coatings at facilities of the fuel and energy complex by analogy with international standard API 2218.Conclusion. Based on the analysis, it was concluded that approaches to the philosophy of the fire resistance of structures of buildings and structures of the fuel and energy complex in the documents under consideration are fundamentally different. In order to improve the Russian regulatory and technical framework, governing fire safety and fire resistance, it is proposed to consider the requirements of foreign documents that take into account proven international engineering and technical practices, in particular, the use of a probabilistic approach taking into account hydrocarbon fires.

Structural Fire Protection of Steel Structures in Arctic Conditions

Most structures in the Arctic and Antarctic for oil and gas production are offshore stations, tankers, modules, steel supporting, and enclosing structures, which need to be protected against both cryogenic spills and fire exposure. Oil and gas industry facilities have products of high flammability and explosiveness, which in the case of ignition make it possible to develop a fire along the hydrocarbon curve, accompanied by a sharp jump in temperature and the formation of excessive pressure. This article discusses possible structural fire protection for metal structures in the Arctic region. Three different structural fireproofing materials are presented using super-thin basalt fiber (STBF) as an example. Tests of steel structures with fire protection are demonstrated, as a result of which the time from the beginning of cryogenic exposure to the limit state of samples is determined, and after the time from the beginning of thermal exposure to the limit state of samples under the hydrocarbon temperature regime is determined. An assessment of various flame retardants with values up to 120 min, which can be used in arctic climate conditions, was carried out. It was found that the most effective coatings are materials prepared on the basis of STBF.

Analysis of the causes of engineering structures deformations at gas industry facilities in the permafrost zone

Construction of oil and gas infrastructure facilities on permafrost soils is the most important task of increasing the raw material base of the entire fuel and energy industry in Russia. Permafrost soil is a complex, multicomponent system, state of which depends on many factors. Buildings and structures built under such conditions, on the one hand, have a complex thermal effect on permafrost soils, and on the other hand, they perceive the consequences of changes in the characteristics of such soils. This situation leads to the fact that buildings and structures on permafrost soil during their life cycle are subject to complex and poorly predictable deformations. Article presents the results of a study for various degradation processes of permafrost soils that can be implemented at construction sites of industrial facilities. Analysis of the deformations causes for engineering structures at the gas industry in the permafrost zone is carried out. Series of reasons causing such deformations have been investigated. Comprehensive criterion for assessing changes in permafrost-geological conditions of industrial sites is proposed. It is suggested to apply the method of calculating the individual characteristics for the temperature regime of the territory to monitor and assess the conditions of heat exchange and predict changes in the geocryological conditions of permafrost soil.

Геополитические вызовы российской Арктике при углеводородном освоении территории

The article is devoted to the issues of geopolitical risks (GPR) in the hydrocarbon development of the Russian Arctic. The authors pay special attention to the analysis of modern geopolitical and geostrategic challenges of the Arctic region development. The article identifies the key geopolitical factors that affect the sustainable development of the Arctic and analyzes the similarities and differences in the geostrategic positions of the Arctic Five. One of the most important factors of the XXI century that determines the alignment and interaction of various geopolitical forces is the struggle for resources. In this regard, an increase in GPR in the Arctic, related to its resource potential, is inevitable. For oil and gas industry facilities, GPR can be transformed into opposite environmental factors in the form of additional opportunities or threats, which the authors identify in detail for each type of risk. The authors focus on such positions of the GPR, which are related to ensuring access and obtaining control rights over the Arctic's hydrocarbon resources from different countries, the uncertainty of the legal status of the Arctic region, and the use of geoecological risks (GER) as manipulative priorities of attention to Russia's actions in the Arctic.