Day One: Origin and Nature of Petroleum
Competency Description: As a professional in the oil and gas industry, you need to gain fundamental technical skills to comprehend what oil and gas is, how it was formed and discovered and the various methods for getting it to the marketplace.
Key behaviours
- Understand how oil and gas was formed, the significance of how reserves are estimated and grasp the importance of how long this resource will last
- Understand the scope and structure of the exploration industry
- Appreciate the importance of crude oil and natural gas transportation logistics on the oil and gas value chain
Topics to be covered
- Chemistry of fossil fuels
- Basic petroleum geology
- Origins, formation and trapping of oil & gas
- Exploration and production methods
- Transportation Logistics
- Course Exercise - Estimation of Reserves
Day Two: Overview of Refining
Competency Description: As a professional, you need to be cognizant of the surface facilities for the treatment of well fluids and their subsequent refining into fuels and petrochemicals.
Key behaviours
- Understand how oil and gas is processed for shipment to refineries
- Appreciate the scope and structure of the refining industry
- Recognize the importance of crude oil type and refinery complexity have on profitability
Topics to be covered
- Classification of hydrocarbons
- Surface processing of oil and gas
- Refinery types and complexity
- Hydroskimming, Cracking and Coking Refineries
- Refining Margins and Profitability
- Course Exercise - Netback & Complexity Factors
Day Three: Refinery Process Operations
Competency Description: As an engineer/ technologist, you need to understand the separate processing requirements for producing a marketable on-specification product.
Key behaviours
- Grasp the importance of secondary processing using vacuum distillation and residue reduction adds value and improves refining margins
- Appreciate the importance of maximizing gasoline and diesel production have on the refinery’s value chain
- Understand how blending operations are a refiners last chance to improve his bottom line
Topics to be covered
- Physical separation – Crude and Vacuum Distillation
- Chemical conversion processes, Gasoline Production
- Hydrotreating, Catalytic Reforming, Alkylation, and Isomerization
- Residue Reduction I: Cat Cracking, Hydrocracking, Visbreaking, Hydrocracking
- Residue Reduction II: Coking, Asphalt and Residual Fuel
- Course Exercise - Blending
Day Four: Petrochemicals I - Production and Uses
Competency Description: The petrochemical industry requires an understanding of the different types of feedstock and their origins.
Key behaviours
- Appreciate that olefinic and aromatic petrochemical precursors are specialty chemicals produced by the refining processes from refineries of high complexity numbers
- Understand that petrochemical feedstocks are not produced by simple distillation of crude oil since their proportion in the crude itself may be non-existent, however it can be produced from naphtha, one of the main products of distillation
- Appreciate that aromatic based petrochemicals are important to the polymer industry even though the refining industry is trying to minimize these in gasoline due to its toxic properties
Topics to be covered
- Production and segregation of olefinic and aromatic compounds
- Olefin based compounds
- Ethylene
- Propylene
- Butadiene
- Isobutylene
- Aromatic based compounds
Day Five: Petrochemicals II - Production and Uses
Competency Description: This high value route to petrochemicals is one way of commoditization of natural gas that in some cases is either flared or reinjected into crude oil wells.
Key behaviours
- Understand the scope and structure of the exploration industry
- Appreciate the importance of petrochemicals derived from natural gas since this is a commoditization route to improving the gas value chain
- Comprehend that countries with abundant gas reserves that are utilized for petrochemical production have a competitive edge against their naphtha based competitors particularly during high crude oil prices (above $70/bbls)
Topics to be covered
- Commoditization of natural gas
- Natural Gas based compounds
- Gas to liquid technologies
- Case study - Petrochemical production – Major Companies
- Course roundup and discussions