The Path to Decarbonization through Electrification: A Refinery Case Study and Lessons Learned

The oil and gas industry faces the challenge of strategically becoming more efficient, sustainable, and environmentally responsive. For those industries to achieve that transformation, decarbonizing is one option, and a key solution therein is decarbonation through electrification, a process that involves modifying, upgrading, and/or replacing steam-driven assets with more efficient electrically driven equipment. The electrification process also requires new sources of energy, a robust power system, and possibly even the reconfiguration or upgrade of the electrical distribution. Alternatively, improvement of energy efficiency is another option to rise to these new industry challenges.In this paper, the authors will present a refinery case study using an actual project with close to 40,000 hp of electrification, and improved efficiency, including the path taken from a technical perspective, and the various challenges and lessons learned for a successful execution.