ROBERT BRELSFORD
Downstream Technology Editor
Dear Refiners,
You've put your downstream technology editor in an awkward position, as the role requires having to reject your manuscripts without wanting to discourage future submissions. In an era where your legal departments have outlawed attaching your names to any article, these rejections are painful.
When a manuscript arrives, the editor hopes beyond all hope that it will be the honest-to-goodness, real-deal, problem-solution-results, mighty-and-mythical beast of a paper that says…something. Three sentences in, though, the fantasy begins to fade: no problems to troubleshoot, no innovative applications of process knowledge or operational expertise, no details even signaling actual operations.
The fifth sentence mentions a new computer software program, but…never mind. It still seems to be something under development, and even then, too far afield from helping any reader solve the problems they encounter in the everyday world.
By the start of the second paragraph, the editor's dream is altogether dashed, while by the third, it's dissolved into a marketing-department-manufactured nightmare. The experience is frustrating. Were the manuscript from a fledgling company hoping to sell its untested technology to a first customer, it would be routine. Such a paper from you, however, is just plain heartbreaking, and it raises a question: Is this really the legacy you'll leave behind?
For all the lip-service paid to collaborative initiatives, knowledge-sharing, and global programs aimed at encouraging meaningful exchanges to improve operational practices everywhere, are you really now entrusting your marketing and communications departments to translate the practical knowledge and experiences of your process engineers and unit operators to your industry peers?
The more pressing question may be at which point you gave up believing your engineering and operating personnel were the rightful guardians of the wisdom enabling the best of you to successfully daily manage the virtual miracles of your plants? It's no small feat, but your technicians consistently do it.
Your communications advisors don't know how to do it. Your lawyers absolutely don't know how to do it. It's your engineers and operators that do it.
And how do they know how to do all that they do so well? Simply because of the commitment those that came before them had to documenting their trials and experiences for fellow engineers and operators when the processing industry was still in its infancy. And do you know where they documented these foundational marvels, wonders, and possibilities involved in petroleum processing? Here in OGJ.
Somewhere along the line it seems you've forgotten this. Maybe it was a turnover in the workforce, the passing of the metaphorical torch by the early refining trailblazers to a younger generation that since has had the knowledge condensed and excerpted nicely and neatly between the covers of a textbook instead of having it arrive at their desks in the pages of the magazine where it first appeared.
Maybe it's the delusional mindset of executives and corporate attorneys whispering in their ears that what happens in a plant stays in a plant because it's proprietary knowledge that, let loose, would somehow devastate some competitive edge.
The list of maybes could go on endlessly, but whatever caused the memory lapse, its effect remains the same. At this stage in the game, a great many of you are leaving a legacy of pseudo-technical fluff: marketing material, puff pieces…blather.
You'll be hard-pressed to find it in our pages, though. It would be a slap in your forerunners' faces. If you don't understand why, ask this editor for a sample (scanned from the archives, if necessary) of one of the trailblazing articles on refining OGJ published beginning in the early 1900's. You'll likely find it was penned by an engineer or operator that worked at a previous iteration of your own company today.
When those ladies and gentlemen talked about sharing collective knowledge and experiences to better practices of the processing industry, that's precisely what they did. Maybe the genuine comradery that characterized those formative years of the industry really has become a thing of the past. Earlier this month, a couple of US refiners showed evidence to the contrary during exceptional presentations at conferences in Galveston, Tex., and New Orleans, but these companies belong to an ever-shrinking minority.
To the majority of you, then, just pause to consider the tales you're telling and what they will signify for future generations of engineers and operators. Measured by the light of your industry predecessors, the legacy you're leaving to date is looking fairly dim.
Respectfully,
OGJ's downstream technology editor