The Middle East Tales

Mixed withe the importance of Networking and making contacts

After nine years in Curaçao and my second time in Nigeria my wife and I

decided to go home and wait for a good position to become available.

One Friday morning T around 9am, I got a call from an agent who

initially recruited me for the Curaçao job, and who I used to hire some

Power Plant Engineers.first he asked if I was available as he had a “hot”

job for BP.

I said yes,and was told to wait for a callback. Within 10 min another call

came from BP, it was my coordinator fro the Curaçao job and explained

he needed someone for an urgent job in The Sultanate of Oman is said

yes I’m interested and again asked to wait for a call from the GM of the

refinery.

As soon as I hung up another agent called for the same position.

After about 20 minutes I got the call from the GM in Oman who was

happy to hire me without interview. The refinery had just started up after

Turnaround Maintenance and had flaming rain from the elevated flare

tip,a gas cloud over the refinery, and a couple of aborted start ups, he

needed someone ASAP. Could I be available the next Tuesday to which I

said sure if you can make the arrangements and visa by then.As it

worked out I was on my travels by the Friday.

I was met at the airport and whisked to my hotel, and was picked up in

the morning to meet my new GM He welcomed me and gave a brief

history of the refinery, it was a simple Hydroskimming refinery built to

Shell DEPs and planned to be operated by Shell, but as they already

operated the upstream system the Ministry of Oil and Gas decided that

was to many eggs in one basket so decided to operate the refinery under

the ORC (Oman Refinery Co.

after several years of different O&M contracts it was decided to hire a

Refinery Manager from US, and direct hire senior managers.

Interestedly, there were plans to develop a second refinery to process the

Long Residue from the original site and the technology chosen was

RFCCU.

Later I would be heavily involved in developing the project but first I

had to solve a few existing problems

First was the problem with flaming rain from the flare stack.

As part of my onboarding I had meetings with all managers and

department heads so I asked what had happened. The Electrical and

Instrument head explained the during the recent TAM he implemented a

project to install a DCS system refinery wide,approximately 10000

instrument loops were converted but only one was configured wrong. It
was a level control on the Light Gas Oil stripper which was cascaded to a

flow controller on the product pump discharge.

For the project additional instrument technicians were hired in to

complete the loop checks and one instrument was connected in a reverse

action to what it was supposed to be. As the LGO flowed directly into the

Stripper vessel when the level controls sensed rising level it should

cascade to the product flow control and increase product flow to

storage. As a result of reverse action the stripper overfilled and a safety

valve (PSV) lifted and all gas oil production went to the flare system and

overloaded the Knockout drum capacity and Hence a spectacular display

of burning liquids from the elevated flare stack. Fortunately no damage

was caused other than with the neighbouring community which had

grown into residential highly saught after properties.

My first question was of course “ do you involve the end user ie

Operations in the final loop check acceptance “

The answer was no that would take too long to which I responded from

now on the loop checking on any instruments must be witnessed by

operations personnel and will not be accepted into operation until signed

off.

I then explained “The FIVE WHYS “

1 Why was flaming gas oil coming out of the flare?

Answer because the Knock out drum was overloaded

2 Why was the knockout system overloaded?

Answer because there was a wrong connection in the Flow controller

3 Why was there a wrong connection?

Answer because the the technician made an error.

4. why did he make an error?

Answer He did not know the full loop action

No No No

5 What is the root cause

Answer Inadequate systems for testing instrument loops, not a human

error but a failure of the Management System

During my time in Curaçao I was privileged to receive extensive TQM and

Continuous Improvement raining by Bill Conway a guru in the topic .

One of the Key Tenets was that “ Employees have an inherent desire to

do well at work but 80% of problems are System related not People

related.

Next problem was the vapour cloud incident.

During start up of the Naphtha Hydrotreater. A small bore (less than 1”)

instrument connection on the Stabiliser column fractured off at the entry

to the column released a large volume of LPG and lighter hydrocarbons.

Fortunately again there was no fire or injuries but the potential for these

was very high.

Looking at the design of the connection it met design requirements at the

time of construction but after going through many thermal cycles, stress

cracking resulted in the failure.

As mentioned I was hired in from BP under a Technical Service

agreement and one of the deliverables was access to BP RPS design

guidelines which are based on Industry Standards but enhanced with

experience gained from past incidents and failures in service.

Remembering that the RPS for piping systems included a requirement

that all small bote piping should be supported by a simple triangle plate

welded in place to stop excess vibration. So we added this to the failed

connection and introduced a survey of all small bore piping in the

refinerand added the simple solution.

Now it was time to look at improvements to the Gross Margin and

potential cost reductions.

This was pre LIMS days so I received daily lists of the feed and product

Lab analyses but no trend or online results so out withe the graph pads.

Two obvious problems were

1. The LGO 90% distilled and FBP varied widely

2. Despite having installed a CCR to the Catalytic Reformer the RON

of the Reformate was only 93.

As this is a simple hydroskimming refinery it was important to maximise

Diesel production and minimise Fueloil make.

I called the team around and we discussed the problem.

The refinery had a good deal on pricing mechanisms 60% of crude was

fixed at $30/bbl the remainder at market prices.Gasoline, Aviation Fuel

and diesel between $42-43 per barrel.

Fuel oil was sold on term contract at approximately 80% of crude prices

What we found was the column also had a HGO draw off and stripping

vessel,but as during commissioning the flow control on the system

couldn’t work so they abandoned it.

Next thing I asked was Well have we tried the optimise the LGO draw

and smooth it closer to the spec.of 366 90% point ? To my surprise no

one has asked before.

I always like to keep it simple and smart “Kiss” so I explained:

We process 14300 M3 of crude and should make 2860 M3 Diesel.

We are losing at least 10% to residues so 286 a day, 2860 M3 every 100

days or
10400 a year. At 42.77$ a barrel we are losing $27543738 dollars a year,

not including the additional diluent to needed to bring the fuel oil into

viscosity spec.

As soon as the team realised this they were very enthusiastic about

solving the problem.

The first step was to optimise the draw off temperature and stabilise it.

Then raise the 90% distilled to at least 365C.

Within the week we achieved the savings.2.7 million dollars

Next problem was the Reformate RON.

I asked the LP planner to join the team meeting and I explained that with

the addition of a CCR to the previous Semi Regen Reformer we should

be able to produce up to 102 RON Reformate for two years between

TAM maintenance.

I asked the planner when was the model last updated.

The response amazed me. Despite spending multiple millions of dollars

upgrading the plant, the LP model had never been updated.

I requested it be updated and several runs carried out at 2 RON intervals.

The optimum worked out at between 95 and 96. As soon as this was

implemented we eliminated the need to export light naphtha and

optimised the gasoline pool.

After around 2 months my Immediate Boss the Operations and Technical

Manager was promoted to Oman Oil,and I was offered the job and so I

started on more ambitious projects.

Looking at the cost structure of the refinery I noticed all power was

imported from the National Grid via neighbouring PDO who charged a

handling O&M cost.

Ten years before the Refinery had installed 5 small 2MW gas turbines

with associated waste heat boilers of 10 Tons an hour each capacity.

These had been idled for the last nine years and this rung alarm bellyin

my head as most National Oil Companies are Audited by the government

and so I began a program of rehabilitation and start up of these assets.

Gathering the bigger team now we discussed the way forward, of course

there were some negative responses.

1. “ They are too costly to maintain”

2. “We don’t have enough gas to run the Gas Turbines “

The first one was easy to combat. I explained that if the Project was

properly evaluated the cost of operations and maintenance would have

been included in the project approval.

The second problem was also quite easy to combat.

The refinery sold LPG to the local market and any excess exported to

UAE.

I had an ex UOP process engineer in the Technical department so I asked

him to evaluate making less LPG and more gas on the Catalytic

Reformer.

As we only received $11/barrel for LPG a quick comparison of Electric

costs versus lPG sales showed a positive for Own Generation of

electricity, and so we began starting the GT and boiler systems one by

one.

Within 3 months all were online and Electricity costs reduced by more

than 40%

Always evaluate Make or Buy opportunities profit or loss can change on

a daily basis.

My next task was to look at the Capital Expenditure, the Refinery had a

healthy 50 million OmaniRial budget but looking at the actual spend

more than 80% was returned to the Government every year. One obvious

example was a project to install a Penex Unit, this proposal had been on

the books for over 3 years with no progress. I had a meeting with the

Project Manager and asked why there was no progress. His answer was “

the Process Engineering department does not have manpower to prepare

the BDM ( Basic Design Memorandum) which is used to tender an EPC

contract.

I pulled out his Job Description and showed him the first sentence which

was:

“Responsible for all Projects from Concept to Commissioning “

I advised him that if he could not get the information he required then he

was Empowered to contract out the BD M , and as the budget for the

Penex was $25 million he could spend $2.5 million on contracting out the

Front End work.

This was done and eventually the plant was built.

I also advised that within the year I needed to see a change from 80%

carryovers to 80% plus Completed.

Most people don’t really read their Job Description and sometimes we

need to help them to understand what powers they have.

Part of the refinery Mission Statement was To Create Jobs for the Omani

people,

And there was a Mega Project in the conceptual phase to build a second

refinery to process the Long Residue currently sold as 180c/s Fuel Oil.
I worked with the GM and the new Process and Utilities Manager on

development of the project. Initially the new facilities were to be built in

Salallah in the Deep South of Oman.

Later this would be changed to a small Port town called Sohar. My

knowledge of the place was that it was 2 hours drive from Muscat where

you turned left and another 2 hours later you were in Dubai. My wife

and I made many weekend trips there.

Little was I to know I would return there almost 10 years later for some

of my most successful achievements and a very pleasant 4 years.

I will continue with that story in my next memories.