local crude oil diesel mini topping

Today are still economical areas , crossed by crude oil pipeline, producing their own crude oil, but exporting their production.

As nowadays no economical area can avoid burning oil products, and specially diesel-oil, this means that some areas located close to the upstream crude wellhead or close to crude oil pipeline export completely their crude oil production and import 100 % of their refined oil products needs. Sometimes for years, or ten years, or even more.

The cumulated resulting money waste is very important..

Local Economical Area

When oil products are used in an economical zone or area, 1 of them may be dominant: diesel oil for remote energy power generating plant, or as motor oil for industry, trucks and cars.

The necessary infrastructure is existing in the right place of the economical area to achieve proper import of diesel oil products and their distribution to the local consumers. In other words, the economical area or activity zone is already clear with the diesel-oil refined products as concerns the commercial importing step, the storage step, the pumping step, the local transport and distribution step.

Only one step is missing: REFINING.

Refining Overseas vs Local Refining

Inside the local economical area, refining locally or overseas is changing some points but not the entire global cost of oil products storage, pumping and movements.

The refining process cost is about in the same range being operated here or there, as the main part is the percent of crude oil feed being burnt as necessary fuel for the various process units.
The great difference between overseas and local refining appears as an evidence if taking the local refining as a base for the comparison: to refine crude overseas, two transport costs have to be added: Pipeline and sea tanker crude export plus land overseas local transport to the overseas refinery. Refined oil products overseas land transport out of overseas refinery plus sea tanker import back plus local pipeline transport back to the economical area.

To give a range of costs, each of these two steps may be assumed (minimum): 3 US $/Bbl. With this assumption, refining overseas generates an immediate loss of:

# 6 US $/Bbl

Local Refining of Local Crude Oil

The Economical Area can be considered as follows:

An electricity generating diesel power plant is existing and supplying power to a large area of activity (or several).

The skid-mounted refining units will also produce diesel motor oil which will cover the needs of the associated diesel consumers area.

Local Refining Investment

As seen above the local economical area is already importing refined diesel oil products and has its own infrastructure operating:

Refining crude oil feasibility does not mean a giant grass-roots refinery with own infrastructure and supplying oil products to various economical areas.

Only taylored process units sized exactly for the economical area needs are necessary. Let us assume that a 10.000 Bpsd mini refinery designed to process the local crude would supply the necessary diesel oil for the local consumers (for instance # 3500 bpd).

Then, the main refinery process skid mounted units would be:

Atmospheric crude oil distillation (topping).
Gas plant .

Investment (10 000 bpsd crude oil feed mini topping for 3500 bpsd diesel production) :

# US $ 22 Million

Local Refining Skid Mounted Units PAY-OUT

Only considering the profits achieved when avoiding the useless transport costs (crude export and oil products import) the basic benefit is:

6 US $/Bbl * 3500 Bpsd * 330 days/year # US $ 7 Million

Pay-out : # 3 years

Considering also the profits achieved when avoiding the overseas processing costs the basic benefit is increased:

Pay-out : < 3 years

If the heavy fuel is also recovered (for thermal power generation) the profits achieved when avoiding the useless heavy fuel import costs (crude export and heavy fuel oil import) the basic benefit is greatly increased:

Pay-out : < < 3 years