Develop a big-picture understanding of the refining process, its economic drivers, and its critical impact on the energy marketplace.
At A Glance
Industry Segment | Natural Gas, Oil |
Course Level | Introductory |
CPE Credits | 12 |
DTN Credits | 6 |
Competency Path | Certified Energy Professional, Oil |
What You Will Learn
- How the refinery fits into the overall petroleum industry.
- A discussion of the widely varying crude oils to be processed.
- Refinery types and complexity.
- Petroleum chemistry (to the extent needed to understand the units).
- Methods of separation, concentrating on distillation.
- Decomposition (cracking) by both thermal and catalytic means.
- Unification and alteration including alkylation, polymerization, isomerization and catalytic reforming.
- Chemical treatment (including hydrotreating) and product blending.
- The economic drivers that determine refinery profitability.
Who Should Attend
New employees, or those newly assigned to responsibilities in the various aspects of the petroleum industry would find this refining class especially helpful in understanding the role of the various operating units and how these units fit together to efficiently produce a wide array of products. For example, those assigned in upstream, mid-stream, marketing, tax, legal and information technology functions typically have little or no knowledge of the refinery, which is one of the fundamental building blocks of the petroleum industry.