Browsing by Subject "Petroleum industry and trade"
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Item A proposed currency composite approach to pricing OPEC oil: problems and possibilities(Texas Tech University, 1982-08) Shaaf, Mohammad BagherNot availableItem An office complex for Mesa Petroleum Company: Midland, Texas(Texas Tech University, 1984-12) Causey, Mark EugeneNot availableItem An offshore research and production facility in the Philippine Sea(Texas Tech University, 1981-05) Berry, John HaroldIn today's world, man is facing the crucial impacts of staggering population growth, increased food and energy consumption, and increasing dependence upon available natural resources. Solutions have been proposed and implemented-birth control, soil conservation, energy conservation, fuel efficiency, and oil, gas, and coal production increases are just a few. These apparent answers are the views of Western societies, though the most acute deprivations occur in the developing Eastern cultures. The recent "energy crisis" has emphasized the consequence of mass industrialization. The answer to this dilemma is not energy independence or making more and using less; it can only be seen in a comprehensive reevalution of the world's energy needs and potential energy sources. As OPEC dominates the world petroleum market, the gluttonous industrialized countries are forced to research and develop alternative energy reservoirs. To anticipate future energy directions, one must establish a clear distinction between non-renewable and renewable energy potentials. This creates an obvious failure in dependence upon fossil fuels. It is debatable whether the world will reach maximum petroleum production in 1990 or beyond 2000, but it is inevitable. Coal and natural gas are also resources in finite quantities. Present day attention is now focused upon the capitalization of the natural energy that surrounds us continuously - air movement, thermal absorption and radiation exposure. This thesis will be limited to the investigation of these constantly renewable energy sources as they exist in the marine environment. The energy production technologies to be implemented will include Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC), wave energy conversion, wind energy conversion, and the diversified aspects of solar energy. To prevent the exploitation of these resources and the delicately balanced cycles within the marine environment, one must seek a natural integral system. Integral in the sense of a unified whole, by definition "essential to completeness". To achieve this integral design there will be greater emphasis upon process than with realized form. As man extends his built environment further into the oceans, a distinct possibility is that this coexistence will be of greater benefit to the marine inhabitants than it will be to the human users. Evidence shows an increase in the biological populations due to man-made marine structures.Item Enzymatic degradation of cotton used for spill absorption(Texas Tech University, 2004-12) Kota, BinduOil spills in marine environments produce observable impacts on the ecosystems and require immediate responses. Methods to minimize the impacts involve clean-up and collection of oil by in situ burning, biodegradation, dispersants, booms, skimmers, and sorbent materials. Cellulose-based organic sorbent materials have the advantages of selective removal of oil over water, biodegradability, relatively low cost, and limited impact on the environment. Cotton and wool fibers could replace synthetic materials, such as polypropylene, as the sorbents of choice in oil spill removal. Cotton and wool fibers biodegrade, preferentially adsorb oil over water due to the natural wax coat on their surfaces, and can be easily disposed. Cellulose sorbents are also used in cleaning and maintenance of equipment in laboratories. Generally, cheesecloth and laboratory wipes are used in cleaning of radioactive wastes produced in nuclear laboratories such as the Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). The radionuclide-contaminated cellulose wastes require suitable means of degradation and disposal. Untreated radioactive wastes with various levels of radioactive strengths are stored in large volumes over decades throughout the world necessitating disposal.Item Modeling of a delayed coker(Texas Tech University, 1996-05) Albers, John E.Feed quality is the primary variable involved in delayed coking. Research into the effect of feed quality, as well as the effects of the operating variables of temperature, pressure, and heavy gas oil recycle is covered in Chapter 3. Feed analysis and characterization are covered in Chapter 4. The traditional method is separation of resid into pseudocomponents based on solubility/absorption criteria. Besides being difScult and expensive, this approach has not provided data that can be reliably correlated to the coking process. A recent development in this area of research, the solvent-resid diagram, is also discussed. Research into determining the reactions involved in delayed coking is reviewed in Chapter 5. One interesting aspect of delayed coking is that the reactions that produce coke proceed through an intermediate mesophase. Research into the formation of this second liquid phase and the transformation of mesophase to coke is reviewed. Hydrogen transfer reactions are another important aspect of the chemistry of delayed cokers, particularly coke quality. Research in this area is also reviewed. Of course, the purpose of the research is the development of models to improve the ability to predict yields and quality. Most of the research has been into developing yield models. Three different modeling approaches that have been tried use kinetic, Monte Carlo, and empirical techniques. This, as well as research into models to predict coke quality, is reviewed. Models can also be used to improve the control and optimization of the delayed coking process. Advanced control and optimization techniques extensively use coker models. Some commonly used techniques are also reviewed in Chapter 6.Item Statistical analysis of sucker rod pumping failures in the Permian Basin(Texas Tech University, 1998-05) Ge, ZhanyuThis thesis serves the research project. The Artificial Lift Energy Optimization Consortium (ALEOC), which is supported by 11 oil companies in the Permian Basin. The objectives of ALEOC are to share successes and failures in production operations between consortium members, thereby reducing present operating costs, increasing lift efficiency, extending lower-rate well producing life and increasing oil well profitability. The first step toward the goal is to analyze the recorded databases to find out the production operation history and direct the future operations, and hence this thesis. The Permian Basin is one of the largest oil production areas in the world and sucker rod pumping is the main kind of artificial lift in that area. Wasson San Andres field is one of the top old fields and among the most complex in the Permian Basin. Denver City Unit is the largest of all the units in Wasson field. This thesis has just concentrated on tracing the history of this unit. Denver City Unit is operated by Shell Oil Company, it mainly produces oil from the San Andres formation (4700 to 7300 ft. deep, averaging 5200 ft.). The productive portion of the San Andres at Denver City Unit is subdivided into First Porosity and Main Pay. Main Pay possesses the most favorable reservoirs and porosity development. The discovery well was completed on September 28, 1935. Water flood began just after its foundation in 1964, and resulted in the peak production, 150,000 BOPD, in 1975. CO2 injection began in mid-1984, and maintained the steady production thereafter. Denver City Unit Water-Alternating-Gas injection process has the advantages over both continuous CO2 injection and WAG process. Experience shown that in Denver City Unit 7-in. casing has higher artificial lift efficiency. During the 1980s, the beam pumping units were mainly API 640's and 456's. The average run time between failures was approximately 15 months. In recent years sucker rod pumping failures have decreased gradually. The data provided by 11 oil companies came from about 25,000 sucker rod pumping wells, a quarter of the total sucker rod lifted well numbers in the Permian Basin. This is a big and reliable sample group from the population of sucker rod pumping wells in the Permian Basin. The databases were first pretreated from Access files or Excel files to the generalized Excel data file; with data sorting, the data were reorganized according to their company, field, location, formation and depth. Failure frequencies for total, pump, rod, and tubing were calculated to make them more comparable. According to the sorted failure frequencies, failure frequency plots were made to make them more straightforward. Observations of the failure data and plots revealed that different companies have very different failure frequencies, which is an index of field operation efficiency, facility manipulation, underground working conditions of the sucker rod pumping equipment; there is a trend of failure frequency decrease year after year among the participated companies with a few exceptions. In this thesis Fault Tree Techniques have been successfully applied to the analysis of the sucker rod pumping system. After the system was fully understood, a big fault tree was built from top event to bottom events. The evaluation of the fault tree is in the reverse direction, from bottom to top. The statistical probability of occurrence of the events at different levels were calculated. From the analysis of the fault tree structure and Company A's data, the conclusions are: because of its OR-gate structure, sucker rod pumping system is liable to suffer failure, any component may result in complete failure of the whole system; the downhole pump has the highest probability to fail: the weakest portions of the sucker rod string are polished rod, VA rod body, and 7/8 rod box and pin. Suggestions are to get deep into the working theories of the whole system; make the whole system equal-strength during design; find out the failure causes related to operation, manufacturer, equipment working conditions, and so on. Traditional statistical techniques are applicable to all kinds of observed data. In this thesis, the necessary tools have been presented, and used the data for all the companies' total as an example to show the analysis methods. To do the complete analysis here, normal distribution, x"-distribution, and t-distribution are needed to compute their means, variances, and standard deviations. By fitting the normal (or x'- or t-) distribution to observed data, we may convert the discrete system to continuous system, and do the sampling distribution analysis. Regression analysis is used to relate the dependent variable to the independent variable(s), and to predict the future occurrence on a statistical basis. According to the sampling analysis of the failure data from the Permian Basin, a rough idea about the failure frequencies are: total is 0.66 per well per year, pump is 0.25 per well per year, rod is 0.22 per well per year, and tubing is 0.16 per well per year. Due to the incompleteness of the failure data, the main purpose of this part is to provide the necessary methodology.Item The changing concept of petroleum marketing since 1850: with special emphasis on the 1950's(Texas Tech University, 1962-08) Chapman, James D.Not available