Crowdsourcing Refinery Support, Internal and External Communities of Practice

At the recent ERTC Ask the Experts conference in Koln, Germany, the Total SVP of Technology, Eric Duchense, outlined some of the activities that Total is investing in for the future. The title of his talk was "Industry 4.0 - The Next Big Revolution in Refining: Beyond the Digital Refinery." His talk was filled with lots of great information but two items struck a cord with me. Namely, the idea of crowdsourcing learnings from around the industry in both internal and external ways and technical collaboration at an industry level. We at the Refining Community could not be in more support of both. 

Years ago, Coking.com was started with a mission to share learnings specific to delayed coking across corporate boundaries. This was before the internal best practice networks found at most industry majors these days. Companies have invested heavily in knowledge sharing platforms and have reaped the benefits. But there comes a time when your internal experiences run dry and need to seek external input. Historically, this has been done through consultation with "experts." (Full disclosure, I humbly fit into this category). However, consultants take time and cost money. Enter the disruptor, crowd sourcing technical expertise. 

Technical expertise will be free flowing across corporate boundaries soon. Communities of practice exist for highly specialized areas of almost all industries, refining is no different. Walls around competitive advantage tend to come down when discussing safety, health, and environmental (SHE) issues but this is just the beginning. Finding a way around the corrosion caused by a high TAN crude is a safety issue (release) wrapped in a profitability driver (cheaper crude). Ensuring complete burn in an FCC regenerator is a environmental issue (CO to atmosphere) wrapped in a reliability issue (secondary burn) in a profitability driver (yield through catalyst circulation and efficiency). Coke drum hot spot mitigation is a health issue (H2S in cutting shack) wrapped in a profitability driver (cheaper feedstocks). Achieving 99.99% Sulfur recovery in the SRU is an safety issue (H2S and SOx) wrapped in a environmental driver (mandated low-S fuels). Analogies could go on forever. Bottom line, SHE unites us all but ultimately it is the profit motive that keeps us in business. Finding away to break down barriers to move the industry forward will be the way of the future. 

If we as refiners are going to survive the impending revolution in safety standards, transportation fuels, product demand (e.g. chemicals), and climate change, we will need to cooperate as one team to ensure we can deliver the safest, most reliable, least environmentally impacting, and optimized hydrocarbons to the market. Total, one of the largest independent oil companies in the world, is getting onboard. Its time to get on the train and start contributing to your community of practice.

#ERTCAskExperts2017, #Refcomm, #Coking