EXPORT OF CRUDE OIL FROM BHOGAT SPM TERMINAL - SPECIFIC CHALLENGES

摘要

Transportation of crude oil and liquid petroleum products through cross country pipeline for inland movement & through jetty/SPM for export/import has been a very common phenomenon across the world. M/s Cairn India Ltd. ("CIL") are the operator of block RJ-ON-90/1 in India and operate the block on behalf of itself and its Joint Venture (JV) partner - Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC). The Block contains a number of major oil discoveries including the Mangala field in the state of Rajasthan, India. M/s Cairn India Ltd. ("CIL") have approval from Government of India (GOI) for a pipeline to transport crude oil from the Block at Rajasthan to coastal terminal facility in Gujarat and recently commissioned the facility for exporting Mangala crude oil through marine tankers from our Bhogat Terminal safely. The facilities & export operations for crude oil at our Bhogat Terminal is very unique and, specific in nature - especially due to properties of crude oil & mainly considering following aspects. (I) Handling Mangala crude oil containing significant quantities of wax & it is expected to congeal at temperatures below 50°C. (II) Crude oil is always required to be kept heated for maintaining temperature > 60°C - Handling crude with specific properties and scenario w.r.t. normal liquid petroleum products. (III) Displacement of crude oil with Light Flushing Oil (LFO-HSD being used as LFO) from twin marine headers and subsea/floating hose strings after every tanker loading operation & recovery of light flushing oil back to shore tank prior to every export tanker loading. - Safely managing a very distinguished & highly critical/risky nature of operations to prevent congealing of crude oil inside subsea/floating hose systems which cannot be provided with heating system.