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Refining

Plains to buy five crude oil rail terminals in US

The deal includes three crude-oil rail loading terminals in the Eagle Ford, Bakken and Niobrara producing regions, a rail unloading terminal at St. James, La., and a project to construct a crude oil unloading terminal near Bakersfield, Calif. Plains expects to complete the purchase before the year end.

Kuwait picks Foster Wheeler, Amec for refinery, clean fuel projects

The two projects will be implemented simultaneously and are expected to boost the refining capacity of KNPC's parent company, Kuwait Petroleum Corp., to 1.4 million bpd of crude oil and will cost $25 billion.

US monthly oil production climbs to 14-year high

Such statistics reflect the US's growing role as a dominant energy producer. Earlier this year, the International Energy Agency said the US could overtake Saudi Arabia as the world's largest oil producer by 2020 - a trend that would transform global energy markets as well as international politics.

Valero worker dies in chemical exposure incident at Memphis refinery

The accident occurred when an equipment failure released a hazardous chemical inside the refinery, leading to chemical burns when a small glass window shattered in an alkylation unit. Local fire department officials said the workers were exposed to a mixture of propane and hydrofluoric acid.

Sulzer Pumps to supply PetroChina for Guangxi refinery upgrade project

The scope of Sulzer Pumps' supply includes 12 pumps for the residue hydrodesulfurization unit, 18 pumps for the diesel oil hydrotreating unit, and 10 pumps for the oil storage and transportation unit and utility unit. The Guangxi refinery project is scheduled for operation in October 2013.

Sasol advances to FEED stage on huge Louisiana GTL plant, ethane cracker

Sasol is beginning engineering and design work for what would be the first US refinery to convert natural gas into diesel. The facilities would be built in Westlake, Louisiana. Sasol said it will make a final investment decision on the plant in 2014, after the engineering and design review is finished.

Ecolab to exclude refining solutions business from Champion Technologies deal

Champion's downstream process and water solutions business will be spun-off to Permian shareholders prior to the Ecolab acquisition. As such, Ecolab will not be acquiring those specific operations. 2011 sales for the downstream business, which primarily serves refineries, were about $50 million.

How do HPI innovations and best practices transform process engineering?

Aspen Technology: Dhole, V.
Aspen Technology Inc.: Beck, R.

The cross-discipline integration of modeling and analysis tools can help select the best design options and ensure the safe and profitable operation of process plants.

Intelligent indexing is key to 3D CAD plant modeling

Reliance Refinery: Saha, S.
Reliance Ports and Terminals Ltd.: Nair, A.

Indexing is a key activity in CAD modeling. Arbitrary indexing of the models invariably leads to problems, as discussed in this article.

Consider coal gasification for liquid fuels production

Due to faster depleting natural gas reserves and more abundant coal reserves, coal gasification and CTL are solutions to produce liquid fuels over the long term.