Frontier Refining NPRA Daily Production Accounting Cheyenne Wy Refinery

Q&A and
Technology
Forum
Plant Automation & Decision
Support Session
2008
DAILY PRODUCTION ACCOUNTING AT
FRONTIER'S CHEYENNE, WY REFINERY
Tina Geyer, Tina Geyer,
Frontier Refining Inc., Cheyenne Refinery, WY Frontier Refining Inc., Cheyenne Refinery, WY
Marcela Brina Marcela Brina
Soteica Soteica Ideas & Technology, L.L.C. Ideas & Technology, L.L.C.
October 2008 October 2008
2008 Q&A andTechnology Forum
Refinery wide mass balance is an
achievable and worthwhile goal.
It is the basis of any loss control initiative.
Cheyenne Refinery embarked in a refinery-wide mass
balance initiative in 2003.
The project took approximately a year from the kick-off
meeting to the daily use of the new production accounting
system.
Soteica's S-TMS production accounting system is now used
for solving the daily mass balance.
Soteica LLC provided S-TMS software and implemented
the production accounting system.
FRONTIER'S CHEYENNE, WY
FRONTIER'S CHEYENNE, WY
REFINERY
REFINERY
Permitted crude capacity of 52,000 bbl/day.
Frontier markets its refined products primarily in
the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountain region
(eastern Colorado including the Denver
metropolitan area and eastern Wyoming).
Our coking unit allows the refinery to process up
to 100% heavy crude oil for use as a feedstock.
Historically, heavy crude oil has accounted for
80% or more of the Cheyenne refinery's crude oil
charge.
Product mix: gasoline (41%), diesel fuel (30%) and asphalt and other refined
petroleum products (29%).
Crude oil is purchased from local producers and also imported via the Express
Pipeline from Canada.
Soteica
ideas &technology
Since 1985, Process
Engineering Consulting
Company
Projects around the world
Offices in Barcelona,
Houston, Mexico, Buenos
Aires and So Paulo
Full suite of local services:
Implementation
Technology transfer
Full local support
Continuous improvement
program
Soteica products:
Visual MESA: Energy
Management
S-TMS: Production
Accounting
S-SOM: Refinery Scheduling
S-OTS: Operator Training
PRODUCTION ACCOUNTING PROJECT AT
Key factors for project success:
Support of Frontiers management team.
Active collaboration of Soteica's and Frontier's
project managers, both in the implementation stages
and during the operation.
Key factors (cont.):
Mass balance model with the appropriate level of detail
to provide sufficient cross-checking and redundancy
between measurements.
Analysis is done simultaneously of the whole refinery on
a tank by tank and unit by unit level of detail instead of
on a product by product basis.
S-TMS is highly integrated with other Frontier systems,
thus minimizing the manual data entry efforts and errors.
PRODUCTION ACCOUNTING PROJECT
AT FRONTIER'S CHEYENNE, WY
AT FRONTIER'S CHEYENNE, WY
REFINERY
REFINERY
Cheyenne Refinery model includes:
Processing units as black boxes.
Point of receipt and shipments on site as boundary limits.
Tank farm is modeled tank by tank.
Other inventories such as the coke pile, sulfur inventory, and
loaded but not shipped railcars.
Generation and consumption of fuel gas, fuel oil, natural gas
and the sulphur and hydrogen produced and consumed.
The model is easily maintained and adapted to plant
changes (such as new meters, new tanks) by the
Frontier Yield Analyst.
S-TMS production accounting system is highly
integrated with other Frontier systems:
Retrieves information from the data historian.
Imports information from the truck dock system.
Imports information from the weigh scale system.
Exports information to the in-house ERP system that
resides in the corporate offices in Denver.
Daily reconciliation
Initially, an external reconciliation engine was used,
but it was later upgrade to the S-TMS embedded
reconciliation engine.
This change highly facilitated the model operation
and maintenance.
Crude composition is also calculated on a daily basis.
Daily accounting
The role of production accounting, assisted by process
engineering, is to find sources of error and work in a
continuous improvement mode.
The reporting is the common information platform for the
refinery both as a whole as well as on a unit by unit basis.
Production accounting cannot be done automagically. The
accounting and analysis phase is done on a daily basis and
with human intervention.
S-TMS PRODUCTION ACCOUNTING
SYSTEM
DESCRIPTION
S-TMS is an application that allows production
accountants to model inventories and material
movements typical of the process industry.
S-TMS web client provides screens to show all
captured data (both manual and from other systems).
S-TMS can import and/or export information to/from
other systems.
S-TMS has an embedded algorithm engine to minimize the mass
balance statistical errors.
Two reconciliation methods available:
Traditional gross error identification method.
Successive error identification and simultaneous compensation method.
If multiple gross errors are present in the data (most frequent
case), the traditional gross error identification method will spread
the error in a way that makes it very difficult to detect its location.
S-TMS implements a successive error identification and
simultaneous compensation method which allows for a more
precise gross error location.
SYSTEM
DESCRIPTION
SYSTEM
DESCRIPTION
S-TMS PRODUCTION ACCOUNTING SYSTEM
DESCRIPTION
S-TMS:
Calculates inventories, flows and movement
quantities.
Keeps track of material changes in tanks
(Reclassifications / Regrading).
Calculates tank composition (optional Composition
tracking module).
Tracks planning information (optional Planning
tracking module).
Has a complete set of standard reports.
S-TMS
PRODUCTION
ACCOUNTING
SYSTEM
S-TMS
PRODUCTION
ACCOUNTING
SYSTEM
DESCRIPTION
S-TMS Results Analyzer client graphically displays the
model and the reconciliation results.
S-TMS MS-Excel Add-in is used for data export to Excel.
S-TMS Report designer is used for the creation of new
reports and modification and customization of existing
reports.
Results analyzer
Excel add-in
Report designer
PRODUCTION ACCOUNTING
PRODUCTION ACCOUNTING
PROJECT
PROJECT
BENEFITS
BENEFITS
Benefits during the model building phase:
The project team gained a detailed knowledge of the
plants operations and tank farm movements.
All existing accounting procedures were reviewed and
improved in order to gather the daily information
required to perform the mass balance.
REFINERY DAILY PRODUCTION
ACCOUNTING
ACCOUNTING
BENEFITS
BENEFITS
Daily use benefits:
As a result of doing daily mass balances, S-TMS has
helped Frontier resolve many balancing issues with
ease that may have been difficult to find without a
good gross error analysis tool.
Valve leak:
Frontier had a valve that failed on a coker charge tank
which allowed product to leak to an asphalt tank. This
tank was out of service, therefore, not gauged on a
daily basis.
The Result Analyzer helped find the error in an
aggressive manner alleviated the possibility of a tank
spill and selling out-of-spec product.
ACCOUNTING
ACCOUNTING
BENEFITS
BENEFITS
Tank leak:
Frontier had a sales tank that developed an
underground leak. This was found through an
investigation which was launched after several
consecutive days of reported losses.
The tank was quickly taken out of service and
repaired, possibly saving thousands of barrels of
finished product.
ACCOUNTING
ACCOUNTING
BENEFITS
BENEFITS
Missing/Incorrect Movements:
A receipt or shipment will occasionally get
overlooked, such as a missing pipeline shipment, or
a receipt recorded with an incorrect product code.
With the use of the Result Analyzer and the product
balance report, errors such as this are easy to
identify.
ACCOUNTING
ACCOUNTING
BENEFITS
BENEFITS
Flow meters recalibration:
Flow meter inaccuracies are easily identified with
product balance and unit yield reports. Correcting
these meters improves the mass balance on a
continuous basis.
Typically, yielding will discover a meter discrepancy
before operations notices the error.
ACCOUNTING
ACCOUNTING
BENEFITS
BENEFITS
Crude composition tracking:
The crude composition report has helped Planning
with crude purchases, setting unit charge rates and
inventory levels.
Frontier uses their crude tanks as slop tanks and it is
important to identify the intermediate stock in these
tanks to set charge rates and to carry those
inventories to the month-end financials.
ACCOUNTING
ACCOUNTING
BENEFITS
BENEFITS
Reports used by many areas of the refinery:
With the market getting tighter there is a lot of emphasis on
having an accurate mass balance. There are several reports
that help Frontier identify areas that need attention.
Process Engineering and Planning works closely with
Operations and Yielding to have meters recalibrated, orifice
plates checked, and factors verified.
The Refinery Manager closely watches the monthly loss report
and gives direction based on these results.
ACCOUNTING
ACCOUNTING
BENEFITS
BENEFITS
It is very difficult to put a typical dollar amount on the
benefits, because once the problem is discovered and
corrected, it can produce a positive or negative
monetary impact.
The most important benefit in all cases, is the
improved process knowledge and the certainty that
proper accounting is being performed.
ACCOUNTING
ACCOUNTING
BENEFITS
BENEFITS
CONCLUSIONS
A refinery wide mass balance production
accounting system is the first step towards a loss
control initiative.
It provides useful information for the continuous
improvement of the overall measurement system
and generates widely accepted results used by all
refinery area personnel.

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