A Novel Approach to Reduce Energy in Crude Transfer Operations

Abstract As part of its 2030 Sustainability strategy, ADNOC set an ambitious target of reducing operational Green House Gas (GHG) emission by 25%. Inspired by this strategy, ADNOC Onshore Task force teams partnered with Contractors to pursue new technologies and best practices. Main Oil Pumping from field to terminals in ADNOC is one of the significant energy consumers. The quest for energy efficiency prompted ADNOC Onshore to identify energy losses in the main oil pumping facilities and explore means to reduce it as much as possible. As an innovative approach, it was decided to conduct a trial for reducing frictional pressure losses in the pipeline by injecting a Drag Reducing Agent (DRA) and optimizing the number of running oil pumps. By injecting DRA, it was observed during the trial that the frictional pressure loss in the pipeline can be reduced significantly. Depending on the concentration injected (tested concentrations ranged from 7 PPMv to 20 PPMv), these frictional pressure losses were reduced by 50% to 66%. This reduction in observed pipeline frictional pressure losses meant the station discharge pressure could be reduced while still maintaining the same pipeline crude flow rate. By reducing the required station discharge pressure, one of the running main oil pumps would no longer be needed and could be stopped. This resulted in power savings of around 33% in one system (2 pump utilization against normal 3 pump operation) fields and around 50% in another system (1 pump utilization against normal 2 pump operation). This paper analyzes the outcome of the trial study carried out using LSPI's LP 111 Flow Improver (‘LP 111’).