Domestic oil output is the highest in eight years. The U.S. is producing so much natural gas that, where the government warned four years ago of a critical need to boost imports, it now may approve an export terminal. Methanex Corp., the world’s biggest methanol maker, said it will dismantle a factory in Chile and reassemble it in Louisiana to take advantage of low natural gas prices. And higher mileage standards and federally mandated ethanol use, along with slow economic growth, have curbed demand.

The result: The U.S. has reversed a two-decade-long decline in energy independence, increasing the proportion of demand met from domestic sources over the last six years to an estimated 81 percent through the first 10 months of 2011, according to data compiled by Bloomberg from the U.S. Department of Energy. That would be the highest level since 1992.

Follow this Bloomberg link bloom.bg/wxzzIZ for more…
Output Rising
Environmental Concerns
Cutting Trade Deficit
Arab Oil Embargo
Mitchell the Pioneer
Hunting for Oil
North Dakota Booming
1.6 Million Jobs
Lot of Traffic
First Since 2001
No ‘Silver Bullet’
Cooling on Wind
Waning Confidence
Positive ‘Shock’

Start with a cage containing five monkeys. Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana.

As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all the other monkeys with cold water. After a while another monkey makes the attempt with same result, all the other monkeys are sprayed with cold water. Pretty soon when another monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it.

Now, put the cold water away. Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs.

To his shock, all of the other monkeys attack him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs he will be assaulted.

Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one.

The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm.

Likewise, replace a third original monkey with a new one, then a fourth, then the fifth. Every time the newest monkey takes to the stairs he is attacked.

Most of the monkeys that are beating him up have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey. After replacing all of the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys have ever been sprayed with cold water. Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs to try for the banana.

Why not?

Because as far as they know, that is the way it has always been done around here.

And that, my fellow monkeys, is how the Coker operates…

-Gary Pitman

What is the Secret of Success…?

“RIGHT DECISIONS”

How do you make Right Decisions… ?
“EXPERIENCE”

How do you get Experience.. .?
“WRONG DECISIONS”

Check out this informative article  “The Future of Refiners Foretold,”  http://seekingalpha.com/article/318205-the-future-of-refiners-foretold.  From a refining economics perspective, Brad Zigler gives his opinion on why refining is on the chopping block. 

-Paul Orlowski

Fast Forward
What’s a TWIC card? TWIC stands for Transportation Worker Identification Credential. http://twicinformation.tsa.dhs.gov. TWIC was created out of the US PATRIOT ACT OF 2001 - http://freight.transportation.org/doc/water/twic.pdf. Currently, US Refiners are requiring employees and contractors working in secure areas to have TWIC cards. I would like to point out that I have my TWIC card, so I am not only eligible to work in Refineries, I could possibly check your bags at the airport as well.
I just want to get my work done -
This is a phrase mentioned by just about all who enter through the gates of a Refinery. Whether it’s a contractor, Operator, Engineer or Maintenance type. There are Hazops, PTA JSA, LOPA, PHA, if you look at current Safety programs, every acronym known to mankind exists and they all have a different twist to them. Control of work systems has far reaching tentacles. Currently, it’s very frustrating for folks to execute work. They want to be safe. But they want to get their work done. How do you accomplish both.

Hazards and Risks
Our Industry will always have hazards. There is no getting around it. You can design a state of the art system, throw lots of money at it, lots of people. But hazards will always exist. Simply put, Hazard is the potential to cause injury or damage. Risk on the other hand, is the likelihood that the Hazard will cause an incident. Hazards are caused by the following:
• Human Error
• Design
• Mechanical/Power failure
• Environmental conditions (such as weather)
• External Influences
Where risk comes in - is how do I as human determine how to weigh a risk and minimize it as much as possible. What might seem risky to you may not be much of a risk to me. If you are a new engineer or operator and have never performed a particular task, it might be very very risky. But an experienced senior engineer or operator might see very little risk or find it quite manageable. Some risks are very black and white; some are very grey and subjective.

Let’s look at an example:
I am using this case as an example because I have in the past worked a job similar to this situation. A Contract field engineer was discussing with me a project he was working on in a refinery and was very frustrated with the situation. It involved a natural gas TIE-IN in a Sulfur Plant. He felt the TIE-IN could be executed with the unit running and following a Job/Safety protocol. The Unit Engineer was new and didn’t have much experience. The Operators involved were also new. The Operator’s rep for the project felt comfortable with it, but needed the buy in of the Unit Engineer, Operators and Safety, as it was their unit and they would have to be involved in the TIE-IN work. The Unit Engineer felt to make the TIE IN, the Unit would have to be shut down (well that wasn’t going to happen outside a TAR). The newer operators were just following the lead of the new Engineer leaving the project in a stalemate. So who is right? Both parties.
What I am getting at is this particular TIE-IN could be done with the unit running or shutdown. Yes, if you shut the unit down…no problem (although the process of shutting down and starting up units has its own safety risks) but it could also be done safely while the unit is running. This is where experience and thoroughly researching all aspects of the job can benefit the unit and the Refinery.
Safety is a very fluid concept. What will work in one situation, might not work in another. We cannot simply write a Safety protocol and ASSUME it will fit in every situation.

OK, HERE’S ANOTHER EXAMPLE:
Civil work was being done with a road being dug up to put in a fire water line. Ecology blocks with cables connecting them between each of them, were placed around the excavation area so no one would fall in, with a hole watch to monitor contractors working in the ditch. The safety person was adamant that the hole watch should be wearing a harness and fall arrest so he would not fall to the bottom of the ditch. What the safety person did not understand was because of the depth of the ditch, the hole watch would end up at the bottom of the ditch anyway, as the fall arrest would do no good at such a shallow depth.
The hole watch could have simply staged himself outside the ecology blocks while still maintaining communication and visual site of personnel in the ditch. Meanwhile because of where the Safety Rep wanted the ecology blocks placed, a truck driver clipped one of the ecology blocks with the fender of his truck.

POINTS TO KEEP IN MIND
• Use common sense
• Look at each situation individually
• Think it through

Jeanne@SulfurUnit.com

So how is this about Safety?

I got my safety training at the ARCO and then BP Cherry Point oil refinery. The Safety Program was built around asking WYE - What’s Your Exposure. I’m going to congratulate Curt Brisky for his big success in starting it. That WYE question became so ingrained in us that we automatically asked it whenever we were prepping for a job.

Whether you are operating the board, drilling, unheading, loading or planning a turnaround, the WYE question is always appropriate.

Why are you doing this or that, WYE? What’s Your Exposure! I know that is one of the reasons Cherry Point Refinery is consistently in the Solomon top quartile and very low on the OSHA safety ratings.

They even gave us Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)–safety glasses, ear plugs and gloves–to take home. Why not be safe 24 hours a day.

When I ran out to the garden the other day, I didn’t bring my safety glasses or leather gloves. After all, I was just checking the carrots. But while I was there I noticed several branches the wind had blown down and spied some new roses. I picked up the tangle of branches, and did not get poked in the face or eye. Then I pruned several roses to bring inside. Not so lucky on the thorns, I have the scratches to prove it.

Why didn’t I grab the gloves and glasses on the way out, just in case. Was it for convenience? I exited out from the deck and would have to have gone all-the-way-around-to-the-garage to get my PPE. Or was it invincibility (or stupidity) theory? “I’ll be alright just this once.”

At the refinery they give you a lot of grief for not wearing your PPE and rightly so.

But no one’s going to make me wear PPE at home, just like no one’s going to make me plant vegetables or flowers. My quality of life, my hobbies, and yes my simple safety choices are up to me.

WYE?

Why not be safe?

-Paul Orlowski

John Bresland, the chairman of OSHA said,

“Over the past several days, the CSB team has developed a number of serious concerns about the integrity of the piping and equipment at various locations in the plant. These concerns include a lack of required documentation and a lack of needed calculations of the fitness for service of various pieces of equipment.” 

CSB was started in 1998–this is the first time they have asked a company to shut down operations.

Utah’s OSHA director Louis Silva agreed with the temporary shutdown.

Refinery officials said they had already begun the suspension of certain processing units before the CSB request and will suspend other refining processing units in an orderly and safe fashion.

“We have decided to do this because our top priority is the health and safety of our employees and the community,”

Silver Eagle Refining President Dave McSwain said.

“We believe this is the best decision given the circumstances. We are committed to being a responsible business in the community and being a contributor to an important industry sector,” he said. “We take our operating responsibility very seriously.”

According to the CSB preliminary report, the explosion occurred when a 10-inch pipe failed catastrophically, spewing hydrogen onto a nearby heater. The mid-morning explosion forced four families to leave damaged homes. The families were temporarily being housed with Silver Eagle support.

Local news video

November 16, 2009
-Paul Orlowski

Suppliers advertise the latest coker products and services.

There’s even a list of refiner contacts who are willing to be contacted to offer suggestions about serious issues to support the others in the Community.

“The project guys cannot believe I have access to so many different engineers / operations personnel via the web. If we can, we will help out anyone with any problem and share our experiences.” - Graham Lovatt, Sincor

Gary Pitman

“Being a process engineer, I found the discussion…very practical. I thought the breakout group was very helpful and informative. I would like to see more breakout sessions. Everything was useful!”
- Bob Neuman, Koch Petroleum Group

 The hours of discussion is summarized for everyone’s benefit.  It’s available on the Coking Forum at www.coking.com/Forum/tt.asp?forumid=43 under the Ideal Safe Coker category.

One of the groups brainstormed on what an Ideal Coker might look like in relation to equipment, services, people, training, processes, procedures, etc. In some cases the ideas are available and in others the idea may be just a “vision” that the coker industry may target in future years.

The Ideal Coker:
-Dust free
-2 overhead compressors
-2 installed jet pumps
-Way of controlling feed consistency of composition
-A fool proof way to tell when drum is fully quenched
-Top notch training program with simulator supported by mgm’t
-Operator not exposed to any hydrocarbon
-Interlocks that can only be bypassed with rigorous procedures
-Inspection/reliability groups with direct line to top mgm’t
-Mgm’t of Change process and qualitative analysis on all changes
-Double fired furnaces
-Variable speed on pumps
-Controllers on furnace passes that don’t plug
-More skin Ti’s on furnace tubes
-No skin Ti’s but rather continuous infrared scanning of tube
-No skin Ti’s but optic fiber along whole tube so temp can be read at any spot
-Chrome piping in all areas with oil over 500F
-Clear understanding of when to bypass a drum
-Be able to understand when coke is laying down in pipe/tubes, etc
-SS tubes in furnaces
-Floating suction on cutting water tank
-Drill bit that can switch automatically
-Have more test coupons and corrosion monitoring automated into console
-Radar gauge on drum to measure foam/coke level
-Continuous drum level measurement, bottom to top
-Automated top and bottom unheading
-Whole decoking process on structure automated
-Pad vs pit for drums to dump onto
-Zero coking in overhead lines off drums
-Ability to get data that will tell you how to optimize the cycle without damage to drums
-Zero maintenance backlog
-Full maintenance service around the clock
-No drilling equip required to get coke out of drum
-Total quality in design so we don’t have to rely on procedures/people
-Very little people turnover in the coker
-Fully operate in DCS mode on console
-Robot for the deck that can smell, see, hear, sense issues and report data
-Rapid removal of people from decks
-Bridge across derricks at top
-Unlimited budget in Ideal coker
-Pilot plant coker
-External flow meters for heavy oil/resid
-Steam flow meters all over so one can do a good steam balance
-100% spares on pumps and exchangers
-Completely enclosed relief system
-A furnace that can be easily cleaned
-Furnace tubes that can go above 1300F
-Eliminate erosion to thermowells by designing so you can remove thermowells after decoke or shutdown and exchange with a spare set or allow putting in a special designed thermowell for use during the actual decoking

What would you like to add to the list?

Gary Pitman

“What I’ve been seeing now after attending these for 3 years is people are doing things that have been discussed in past seminars.”  -Marc Hoss,Flint Hills Resources Refinery

• At the first seminar in 2001, Jim Blevins commented on Chevron’s goal to get people off the structure. 
• At the 2002 seminar, DeltaValve presented the bottom unheading slide valve (now famous in the industry) that they were developing with Chevron’s input.
• At the 2003 seminar, DeltaValve displayed their full-scale replica “Big Red” that was in operation at a refinery.  Zimmermann & Jansen, Enpro and Velan started designing their own top and bottom unheading systems.

This is definitely the place to given input on what the coking unit needs and discover what’s going on the design table.

The attendees, especially refiners, are actively engaged and contribute to the community for the greater good.  At the Seminar,

Michelle Roberson of LyondellCitgo had the courage to talk about their $23 Million fire and give an evaluation of the incident, root cause analysis and lessons learned.

What a great commitment to the community.

Paul Orlowski

The goal: “Together we can improve safety and reliability.”   

Gary Pitman
Paul Orlowski
Co-founders