Oil Quality Group
Subcommittee on Crude Oil Quality and Trading
Houston, TX
October 3, 2002
At of the meeting attendees can be obtained from the COQA Director.
The Facilitator distributed a compiled listing of all suggestions and comments made thus far on trading and crude oil quality. The Facilitator also displayed a consolidated register of issues that the COQA might be able to influence and asked for discussion on which of those issues are most important to our members. The following is the start of our plan of action.
Trading Panel Discussion Notes Trading Panel Discussion Summary Contract Language
Internet search for published contracts, may not be just oil industry
COQA should come up with suggested wording
Communications
Definitely go forward with publishing a paper in one of the industry journals
Anyone with contacts should please contact the Facilitator
Complaints from a refiner do to get back to the producer
Utilize an open discussion as a part of each meeting? Promote COQA forum page? Copy COQA Newsletter to producers and traders?
There was not much interest in a mass mailing from the COQA to the trading community.
Technical Issues Do not pursue group assays. They are not useful to everyone; the information each refinery needs varies so greatly that there is limited data available to share
In addition to periodic assays, can we get a progressive producer to start utilizing routine HTSD’s? Assays from the producer are still absolutely necessary but the HTSD test might be easier to update frequently.
For common streams, the HTSD or assay should be taken at a gathering location, like St. James, rather than at the well head
Assay frequency should be determined by volume
Some refineries already use real time data
The Art of Trading
Same issues as communication
Educate the trader as to the importance of quality and what quality is
Economics
It was generally agreed that the cost of a monitoring program is minor compared to the cost of the crude and any possible problems a crude might cause to a refinery or the supply system
Variability costs the producer too; non-consistent crude is generally valued per its worst case
Other – Setting Quality Parameters
Use "definition" of crude rather than "specification"
Who comes up with the definition, should the producers designate what they have or the refiners enumerate what they want?
Definition should contain limits on key parameters and be designed to encourage consistency and discourage outliers