The allure of black gold

“Toward black gold throng all. To black gold cling all.” May good old Goethe forgive me for daring to add the epithet “black” to Gretchen’s famous words from the evening scene in Part I of Faust. He certainly could not accuse me of having distorted the meaning. For what was true of gold in the age of alchemy is no less true of oil in the age of industry.
The extent of our dependence on black gold is evident from even the most cursory glance at a daily paper or news bulletin - the ongoing conflict in the Middle East being only the most notorious, but certainly not the only case in point. Nor can anyone seriously doubt that in the current Iraq crisis among other things it's a question of oil, too. After all, it is the land at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates which, after Saudi Arabia, boasts the world's second largest reserves of oil - and hence the life-blood of our socalled Western way of life.

Yet oil and gas are more than just the industrialized world's most important sources of energy. They are also vital raw materials for the chemical industry. Some 95% of all primary petrochemicals (ethylene, propylene, C4 mixture, benzene, toluene, xylene and synthetic gases) are now obtained from oil and gas. This means that between seven and eight percent of the 3.4 billion barrels of crude oil drilled worldwide every year are used to make petrochemicals - an amount equivalent to some 25 million barrels!

In this edition, we will be whisking you off into the world of petrochemicals - a world in which competition is tough and which has recently witnessed a number of mergers and takeovers, to say nothing of a constant stream of new regulations and the development of ever more sophisticated and more efficient processes. For the trend in petrochemicals, an industry in which mass production is standard and profits can be made only by cutting costs to the bone, is definitely towards ever larger, global-scale plant.

That there are several new petrochemical works currently under construction or in the pipeline therefore comes as no surprise. Petrochemicals is not without ist allures for automation specialists as well. AspenTech's advanced control system, for example, has improved both the performance and profitability of two refineries belonging to the Kuwait National Petroleum Company (see page 24), while the installation of a control system made by ABB recently marked a milestone in the modernization of a refinery in Mexico (page 28).

So why not join us on our exploration of the world of black gold?

Dr. Jörg Kempf