Opportunities

As pointed out in Chap. 5, replacing simple columns by complex columns tends to reduce the vapor (and heat) load but requires more of the heat to be added or removed at extreme levels. This means that the introduction of complex columns in the design might prejudice heat integration opportunities. Thus the introduction of complex distillation arrangements needs to be considered simultaneously with the heat integration. This can be carried out manually with some trial and error or using an automated procedure such as that of Kakhu and Flower. ... 

The appropriate placement of distillation columns when heat integrated is not across the pinch. The grand composite curve can be used as a quantitative tool to assess integration opportunities. 

Traditionally, investments in exploration are made many years before there is any opportunity of producing the oil (Fig. 1.2). In such situations companies must have at least one scenario in which the potential rewards from eventual production justify investment in exploration. 

Having defined and gathered data adequate for an initial reserves estimation, the next step is to look at the various options to develop the field. The objective of the feasibility study is to document various technical options, of which at least one should be economically viable. The study will contain the subsurface development options, the process design, equipment sizes, the proposed locations (e.g. offshore platforms), and the crude evacuation and export system. The cases considered will be accompanied by a cost estimate and planning schedule. Such a document gives a complete overview of all the requirements, opportunities, risks and constraints. 

The objective of any exploration venture is to find new volumes of hydrocarbons at a low cost and in a short period of time. Exploration budgets are in direct competition with acquisition opportunities. If a company spends more money finding oil than it would have had to spend buying the equivalent amount in the market place there is little Incentive to continue exploration. Conversely, a company which manages to find new reserves at low cost has a significant competitive edge since it can afford more exploration, find and develop reservoirs more profitably, and can target and develop smaller prospects. 

Reservoir fluid sampling is usually done early in the field life in order to use the results in the evaluation of the field and in the process facilities design. Once the field has been produced and the reservoir pressure changes, the fluid properties will change as described in the previous section. Early sampling is therefore an opportunity to collect unaltered fluid samples. 

If the distribution of gas in a country is run by a nationalised or state owned company, there is effectively a monopoly on this service, and prices for gas distributed through a grid system will have to be negotiated with the distribution company. If the market for distribution is not regulated then opportunities arise to sell gas to other customers and... 

As well as preventing liquid carry over in the gas phase, gas carry undef must also be prevented in the liquid phase. Gas bubbles entrained in the liquid phase must be given the opportunity (or residence time) to escape to the gas phase under buoyancy forces. 

It is good practice to reviewa project on completion and record the reasons for departure between planned and actual performance. Where lessons can be learned, or opportunities exploited, they should be incorporated into project management guidelines. Some companies hold post project sessions with their contractors to explore better ways of handling particular issues, especially when there is an expectation of additional shared activities. 

Introduction and commercial application Investment opportunities in the exploration and production (E P) sector of oil and gas business are abundant. Despite areas such as the North Sea, Gulf of Mexico and the North Slope in Alaska being mature areas, there are still many new fields under development in those regions, and new areas of business interest are opening up in South America, Africa and South East Asia. Some fields which have a production history of decades are being redeveloped, such as the Pedernales Field in Venezuela. 

Petroleum economics provides the tools with which to quantify and assess the financial risks involved in field exploration, appraisal and development, and allows a consistent approach with which alternative investments can be compared. The techniques are applied to advise management on the attractiveness of such investment opportunities, to assist in selecting the best options, and to determine how to maximise the value of existing assets. 

The econom/c mode/for evaluation of investment (or divestment) opportunities is normally constructed on a computer, using the techniques to be introduced in this section. The uncertainties in the input data and assumptions are handled by establishing a base case (often using the best guess values of the variables) and then performing sensitivities on a limited number of key variables. 

Within the project box, the cashflow oi the project (or other investment opportunity) is the forecast of the funds absorbed and the money generated during the project lifetime. Take, for example, the development of an oil field as the investment opportunity. Initially the cashflow will be dominated by the capital expenditure (capex) required to design, construct and commission the hardware for the project (e.g. platform, pipeline, wells, compression facilities). 

The point at which the cumulative cash flow turns positive indicates the payout time (or payback time). This is the length of time required to receive accumulated net revenues equal to the investment. This indicator says nothing about the cash flow after the payback time and does not consider the total profitability of the investment opportunity. 

If you were offered 7,130 today, or 10,000 in exactly 5 years time, you should be indifferent to the options, unless you could find an alternative investment opportunity which yielded a guaranteed interest rate better than the bank (in which case you should accept the money today and take the alternative investment opportunity). 

In the above example, the discount rate used was the annual compound interest rate offered by the bank. In business investment opportunities the appropriate discount rate is the cost of capital to the company. This may be calculated in different ways, but should always reflect how much it costs the oil company to borrow the money which it uses to invest in its projects. This may be a weighted average of the cost of the share capital and loan capital of a company. 

If the company is fully self-financing for its new ventures, then the appropriate discount rate would be the rate of return of the alternative investment opportunities (e.g. other projects) since this opportunity is foregone by undertaking the proposed project. This represents the opportunity cost of the capital. It is assumed that the return from the alternative projects is at least equal to the cost of capital to the company (otherwise the alternative projects should not be undertaken). 

As decommissioning approaches and all well intervention opportunities to increase productivity have been exploited, enhanced recovery processes may be considered as a means of recovering a proportion of the remaining hydrocarbons. However, such techniques are generally very sensitive to the oil price, and whilst some are common in onshore developments they can rarely be justified offshore. 

Usage of such a model gives opportunity to solve three main problems ... 

Identification of the material properties as an estimation of transfer function (TF) for the black box model. In this case the problem of identification is solving according to the results of the input (IN) and output (OUT) actions. There is a transfer of notion of mathematical description of TF on characterization of the material. This logical substitution gives us an opportunity to formalize testing procedure and describe the material as a set of formulae, which can be used for quantitative and qualitative characterization of the materials. 

Systems, based on a method of inspection of slice by slice, in a number of cases allow to solve put problems. But for obtaining of higher resolution it is necessary to have an opportunity to increase number of inspected slices. It results in significant increasing of collection data time that is inadmissible in some applications. Besides this, the maximum allowable number of researched slices is rigidly limited by hardware opportunities of tomographs, and also by level of emission of x-ray sources. 

In Dynamic Spatial Reconstructor at the expense of use 2D matrix of detectors there was the opportunity to use a divergent cone beam of source emission. This system had a number of lacks. In particular the number of projections is rigidly limited by the number of x-ray sources. The dispersion of source emission results in errors of data collected.. However the system confirmed basic advantages of application of conic beams and 2D matrices of detectors for collecting information about 3D object. 

This type of coil was prepared from copper cladded printed circuit board material by applying photolithographic techniques. The p.c. board material is available with difierent copper thicknesses and with either a stiff or a flexible carrier. The flexible material offers the opportunity to adapt the planar coil to a curved three dimensional test object. In our turbine blade application this is a major advantage. The thickness of the copper layer was chosen to be 17 pm The period of the coil was 100 pm The coils were patterned by wet etching, A major advantage of this approach is the parallel processing with narrow tolerances, resulting in many identical Eddy current probes. An example of such a probe is shown in fig. 10. 

Combination of the above methods of suppressing the influence of the non-informative factors has given an opportunity of detecting effectively defects in the objects that were supposed to be useless for electromagnetic control earlier. 

CT offers the opportunity to examine slices through the sample non-destructively and is therefor the only method for measuring exterior and also interior part coordinates without mechanical cutting of the object. 

The measuring error of crack depth by means of electropotential devices is considered to be approximately 10%[2]. The research work performed gives us an opportunity to maintain it that is practice such a measuring error can be higher in many times et some probably combinations of parameters h, I, T. 

Manual ultrasonic testing offers the advantages of low equipment cost combined with the flexibility of the human operator to provide good access and complex scanning capability. However, a total reliance on the capabilities of the ultrasonic technician to visualise the physical situation leads to a number of drawbacks, including lack of accuracy and consistency of defect size and location measurements, lack of verification that the required scan coverage has been fully achieved, and lack of consistency in flaw classification. A further disadvantage is that the ultrasonic data is not permanently recorded there is therefore no opportunity for the data to be re-examined at a later date if required. 

To approve the opportunity of radiography replacement eomparative experiments were performed for various real welds. Experiments are described in the presentation. The following results were obtained ... 

The convenience of the offered monitoring system consists in an opportunity fast adjustment in conditions of many nomenclature manufacture, reception of the protocol of the testing results, opportunity of use of the unskilled personnel. By an offered principle installations for the testing of welding by explosion of cases of plunger pumps, details of air engineering and other were developed. 

Announcements of opportunities, technical inquiries, availability of capabilities, call for papers, requests for proposals, employment announcements. Figure 3 shows a breakdown of newsgroup messages by topic. 

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