4 replies to this topic

[FELIXOKOT]

Members,

 

In a scenario where upstream oil companies report to a Government regulatory body, should the government carry out its own inhouse process modelling and simulation? What would be the advantages of simulation and modelling to the Government regulatory body?  Can anyone send through examples/case studies to show the benefits of this?

 

Thanks in advance for your help and regards.

[Zauberberg]

I don't think anyone in the world would need something like that. It would require massive staff to re-engineer and verify all projects which are going on. Who is going to pay for that? Taxpayers? No way.

 

The designer company bears full responsibility for the engineering design. The operator company bears full responsibility for operation of the facilities. There are certified parties (e.g. Lloyd, DNV) which perform regulatory compliance audits.

[curious_cat]

I don't think anyone in the world would need something like that. It would require massive staff to re-engineer and verify all projects which are going on. Who is going to pay for that? Taxpayers? No way.

 

As an aside, I wouldn't call it process modelling but regulatory bodies like EPA / CSB / NTSB do have internal modelling / simulation groups. But they are not trying to duplicate the entire detailed plant modelling but some external facing / generic aspects of it. 

[RockDock]

I've actually seen this done quite often for State EPA regulatory bodies in the USA.

 

It is in the best interest of all parties to do this. The old method used very rudimentary guidelines for VOC emissions reporting. With the advent of process simulation, reporting is much more accurate. I would much prefer the EPA use a reputable process simulator than the correlations they used to use. There have been many times I've seen it save companies tens of thousands of dollars in penalties.

 

I attended a training course on this topic last year. While I am part of a private engineering firm, the majority of the participants were from the state EPA.

 

Here is a link to the training (it was free for me to attend):

 

http://www.bre.com/T...74/Default.aspx

[FELIXOKOT]

Yes, it is true that detailed engineering might require too much resource. But am sure some form of process simulation would help government boides carry out their day to day regulation duties, espcially since these government bodies have to review all technical documents sbumitted by oil companies.

 

Some one mentioned that this could be limited to "some external facing / generic aspects of it." can you throw more light to this??