Surveys: process, progress

Nov. 10, 2014
The closing of the year is an interesting time for editors at Oil & Gas Journal. For some, it marks an opportunity to breathe that deep sigh of relief and reflect thankfully on a body of work well-executed and now behind them. For others, however, it signals the start of a frantic race to deliver our readers the biggest, most challenging projects undertaken all year.

Robert Brelsford
Downstream Technology Editor

The closing of the year is an interesting time for editors at Oil & Gas Journal. For some, it marks an opportunity to breathe that deep sigh of relief and reflect thankfully on a body of work well-executed and now behind them. For others, however, it signals the start of a frantic race to deliver our readers the biggest, most challenging projects undertaken all year.

This is particularly true for the downstream technology editor, who over the next few weeks will work with OGJ's survey editor in making the mad dash to fill in final data gaps for the annual worldwide refining report to be published in December.

Mind you, as with any industry survey, this is no easy task. There are moments, in fact, when it feels outright impossible.

Process and policies

Make no mistake. The annual refining survey is not something that materializes over the course of a few days. It is a year's-long event of data collection and assembly, and one that is fraught with challenges enough to drive even the sanest of editors…well, frankly speaking, mad.

Up until this year, the refining survey has relied exclusively on direct responses from the operators themselves. That is, OGJ sends out a survey form to refiners, they fill in their respective operating data, and once completed, return that form to our survey editor.

Easy as one, two, three, right?

Back in the day, you'd be spot-on correct. There was a time when the survey format elicited a stellar, active, and eager response rate from refiners, all of whom, at their core, viewed the survey as an opportunity to engage in a knowledge exchange that was used to collectively improve the state of the global refining industry as a whole. The compendium of operating data showed the industry those regions where some processing capacities could be increased, and by the same account, those places that would be better served by capacity reductions.

The survey was a tool refiners looked to as a guide for understanding and optimizing what they did and how they did it.

Heightened government regulations and policies over the last decade, however, have changed the landscape of this communal information share. Take, for instance, California's Bay Area Air Quality Management District's recently proposed resolution to further reduce emissions from San Francisco Bay Area refiners, which could jeopardize current operating permits legally granted to the refineries through the US Environmental Protection Agency's New Source Review and Prevention of Significant Deterioration permitting practices (OGJ Online, Oct. 21, 2014).

EPA's newly proposed "Refinery Sector Risk and Technology Review and New Source Performance Standards" rule would create similar financial and operating burdens on US refiners, according to a 427-page comment on the rule jointly submitted to the agency by industry advocates the American Petroleum Institute and the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (OGJ Online, Aug. 14, 2014).

Policies and regulations that threaten refiners' livelihood without any apparent gains for either the industry or the general public discourage both the former days of collective information sharing as well as any incentive for an operator to embrace transparency. This, in turn, has changed OGJ's approach to the annual refining survey.

Progress

Save for one major integrated oil company who has decided to no longer report its operating data externally, response rates to this year's refining survey from the majors have been exceptional. The mere fact of this tells OGJ that our industry still craves the knowledge exchange it historically has shared.

To those operators that chose not to respond, however, know that a lack of voluntary participation no longer means a lack of inclusion. In our current data-driven, web-based world, your information is out there, and as such, OGJ has expanded its data-collection efforts to deliver our readers the most accurate and complete survey results that it can. It will take time, of course, but it will happen.

Just as Rome wasn't built in a day, or even a year, neither is an OGJ survey.