Trump

Oil and Gas 360: the Trump ‘side effect’

From the stocks’ uncertainty to the pipeline’s manufacturing reestablishment: the new elected 45th US President keeps pushing to boost gas and oil outputs

“Making America ‘Crude’ Again”. This the buyword resounding like a commercial – and spotted by the newspaper – after the last new elected 45th US President Donald Trump’s speeches. How the Trump’s policy could affect the oil and gas market is still undoubtedly hard to sentence. However, barely hours after Trump had taken office, a revised White House website has declared its new found pro energy industry credentials.
That’s the way on which – after three days into his presidency – Trump gave his explicit backing to two controversial pipeline projects: Dakota Access and Keystone XL, providing American steel for their construction.

Nevertheless the presidency of Donald Trump, who made promises on the campaign trail to boost US oil and gas output and roll back regulations unfriendly to industry, is expected to be a stark policy departure from President Barack Obama, who spent much of his political capital over the past four years pushing efforts to combat climate change.

Furthermore, Trump reiterated his creed that pipeline makers use U.S. materials when they build projects in the United States, another sign that he will keep pressure on companies in the middle of the energy sector.

Crossing the boundaries, Mexican gasoline market reforms could influence U.S. gasoline export trends. In facts, the government is in the process of opening its gasoline and diesel markets to outside competition and replacing government-set prices with market-based prices. Last year, Mexico began allowing entities other than the state-owned company Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) to import gasoline and diesel and open retail stations. These changes followed previous energy sector reforms that ended Pemex’s upstream monopoly and opened the oil and natural gas sectors to foreign direct investment. Although Mexico is a large crude oil producer, it relies heavily on imports of gasoline from the United States to meet domestic demand. Therefore, the outcome of gasoline market reforms in Mexico may have significant implications for the sale of U.S.-produced gasoline.

The volume of gasoline trade between Mexico and the United States is significant to U.S. refineries. Over the past five years, U.S. exports to Mexico accounted for between 44% (2014) and 54% (first 10 months of 2016) of total U.S. gasoline exports. On a year-over-year basis, U.S. gasoline exports to Mexico increased by 71,000 b/d in 2015, with additional average growth of 75,000 b/d over the first 10 months of 2016, when U.S. exports to Mexico averaged nearly 390,000 b/d.

Based on projections in EIA’s January 2017 Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), natural gas prices are expected to increase in both 2017 and 2018. Rising natural gas prices could lead developers to postpone or cancel some of the upcoming power plant additions. Construction timelines for these plants are relatively short: more than half of the natural gas-fired generating capacity scheduled to come online in 2017 and 2018 was not yet under construction as of October 2016.
Stock and trading
On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude futures CLH7, +1.43% traded at $52.43 a barrel, down 20 cents, or 0.4%, in the Globex electronic session. Brent crude LCOH7, +1.05% on London’s ICE Futures exchange fell 9 cents to $55.14 a barrel. U.S. oil production now stands at 8.96 million barrels a day, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

According to a BMI Research report, North America, the Middle East and parts of Asia will lead the recovery in oil and gas spending over 2017. The reports told that spending on oil and gas in North America is expected to raise by more than 17% this year.

inline silencer

In-line silencers for compression skid successfully tested

Hydrostatic Test of AISI316L pressurized silencers for screw compressor completed last week.

Stopson Italiana has recently fulfilled the supply of stainless steel in-line silencers to be installed at 1st and 2nd stage of a screw compression skid for offshore installation. With an operating pressure between 1.7 and 8.7 barg and a design pressure of 11 barg, the two silencers have been hydrostatically tested up to 22 barg. Operating temperatures vary in the 180-240 °C range.

hydrostatic testSTOPSON in-line silencers are designed according to ASME VIII Div. 1 and PED certified to match various applications even requiring small, compact construction with high acoustic performance. With special materials suitable for sound absorbing in a pressurized environment, they allow higher velocities since those materials are not directly exposed to the flow, thus maintaining higher initial acoustic performance.

According to the required design pressure, an accurate calculation of the actual fluid density allows proper internal sizing, to avoid the risk of losing soundproofing materials into the flow.
Our design criteria can match the most stringent requirement in terms of thermodynamic conditions, materials and size, thus making STOPSON’s In-line silencer a state-of-the-art solutions for a large number of onshore and offshore installations.

ventilation silencer

Why control of noise is so important in manufacturing

The main principles that affects the engineering process of a soundproofed plant

The noise pollution is considered nowadays a crucial aspect in the selection and construction of manufacturing plants.

Noise is defined as, “the unwanted, unpleasant or disagreeable sound that causes discomfort to all living beings”. One dB is the faintest sound that a human ear can hear. Unless levels are above 85 decibels, noise pollution should not be a problem in the workplace. Federal occupational safety and health mandates state that if the noise produced by heavy machinery or equipment is in excess of these levels, employers must control noise pollution through engineering and administrative controls.

The environmental noise has been doubling every ten years; The Indian Institute of Oto-Rino Laryngology, Chennai reported, in facts, that increasing industrial pollution damages the hearing ability by at least 20%.

Workers in steel industry, who work close to heavy industrial blowers are exposed to 112dB for eight hours suffer from occupational pollution.

Noise is classified as: Industrial Noise, Transport  Noise and Neighbourhood noise. The first one is caused by industry machines, and it entails noise pollution caused by machines from machines in various factories, plants (e.g. Power Generation and Oil & Gas), industries and mills.

The preceding step to the selection and design of control measures, is to identify and carefully evaluate the noise sources. In order to set up the control strategy with the right approach, the following factors need be considered:

  • Type of sound
  • Noise levels and temporal pattern
  • Frequency distribution
  • Noise sources (location, power, directivity)
  • Noise propagation pathways, through air or through structure
  • Room acoustics (reverberation)

Additionally, other crucial factors have to be determined, such number of exposed workers, type of work, amount of time spent to the noise’s exposure etc. Where possible, noise levels should be evaluated at locations occupied by workers’ ears.

The noise control planning is based on a “A-weighted immission” (or noise exposure levels) for which the respect of standard ISO 11690-1 is recommended.

Any noise problem may be described in terms of source, transmission path and a receiver (e.g., a worker); thus a noise control plant needs to take into account the relative combinations of this different factors.

The better phase to project a soundproofing system lies in the original design. In fact, when noise control is included in the first design of a new plant (or factory), advantages both in terms of overall performance and costs’ reduction arise.

When noise cannot be controlled to an acceptable level at the source, attempts has to directed to control it at some point during its propagation path. For this reason, an important part of the process consists to identify noise sources and to sort them in terms of contributions to excessive noise.

When the requirements for noise control have been quantified, and sources ranked, it’s possible to consider various options for implementing the control, determining the cost effectiveness of the various options. Generally speaking, some studies put in evidence that the cost of enclosing a noise source is much greater than modifying the source or process producing the noise.

Stopson Italiana produces fully customized solutions for all type of plants and applications: Boilers, Heat Recovery Steam Generator (HRSG), Turbomachinery, Venting systems, Combustion engines and Industrial equipments.

Check it out http://stopson.it/applications/