Facing Challenges in the Oil Industry

Adda Avendaño

The challenges in the oil industry are significant and complex, ranging from restoring operational reliability, processing capacity, and expertise in the operation and management of refineries, to producing fuels that meet increasingly stringent environmental standards, emphasized Professor Enrique Aguilar Rodríguez, Project Coordinator for Refining and Petrochemicals at the Mexican Petroleum Institute (IMP) and graduate of the Escuela Superior de Ingeniería Química e Industrias Extractivas (ESIQIE) at the Instituto Politécnico Nacional (IPN).

He noted that this industry has strong roots deeply embedded in the nascent Mexican nationalism, supported by various movements, perhaps the most important being the Oil Expropriation in 1938. This event has provided a foundation and allowed the industry to survive the vicissitudes of time and ideologies. However, it is crucial for its development to be directed towards operational modernization and the demands of a society that now places greater emphasis on environmental care.

Technological Milestones in the Oil Industry

To address the challenges in the oil industry, the head professor at ESIQIE considered it important to analyze its development in the national context, which can be divided into three stages. The first, he indicated, was the "driving force" from 1858 to 1938, during which crude could be extracted practically at the surface, as was the case in the so-called Faja de Oro, located in Cerro Azul, Veracruz, and was one of the most productive in the world. At that time, the use of oil was still very incipient, and small foreign installations, mainly American and English, exploited light and easily obtainable crude.

Aguilar Rodríguez considered that the second stage emerged in 1938 when Mexico became the second-largest oil producer in the world. The major challenge for the early oil technicians was the need to operate the plants, following the expropriation, without process books or operation manuals, and without a thorough understanding of the existing infrastructure. The task was to keep the fuel-producing plants operational.

In a third stage, in the 1970s, Aguilar Rodríguez pointed out a significant political vision regarding the growth of energy demand. Refineries like Cadereyta, Tula, and Salina Cruz were built, along with three gas processing centers: Cactus, Nuevo Pemex, and Ciudad Pemex, as well as the construction of large petrochemical centers like Cangrejera and Morelos, producing 500 tons of ethylene per year.

At that time, it was necessary to understand, develop, and apply proprietary technology. Hence, the Mexican Petroleum Institute was created, and recent graduates from the Politécnico and the UNAM achieved a "quantum leap" in understanding fundamental process aspects, refinery operations, optimization methods, and the development of proprietary technology.

Cantarell's Heavy Crude and the Environment

The process engineering expert at IMP recalled that upon the initiation of operations of the new refineries in the 1970s, the discovery and exploitation of one of the largest giant oil fields in history occurred: Cantarell. However, it brought various technical problems for its refining. Mexican refineries were designed to process light crude, but Cantarell's crude was heavy, requiring processing in existing refineries not suitable for its optimal processing. This problem has persisted to date.

The next challenge to address was the environmental and sustainable aspect that emerged in the 1980s, posing significant technical challenges and, above all, social challenges. There was a demand for fuels (gasoline, diesel, and aviation fuel) to meet technical quality and environmental specifications, essentially using the same processing scheme as existing refineries.

The polytechnic teacher considered that the environmental movement is the main driver of all current changes in the oil industry. The significant issue is that Mexican refineries were not built for heavy crude, leading to an arguably unfair accusation against Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) for producing a large amount of fuel oil, a highly polluting fuel due to its high sulfur content.

"So, in the 1990s, projects began for the reconfiguration of refineries, requiring significant investments, around $4 billion per refinery to install a coking plant and additional facilities to process fuel oil," explained the polytechnic graduate.

Challenges Toward a New Refining Approach

"The huge problem in fuel production is to balance technical quality with environmental quality and, at the same time, to achieve energy self-sufficiency, which has been set as a central objective with the Olmeca Refinery in Dos Bocas, Tabasco, as well as with the purchase by the federal government from Shell of the Deer Park refinery, located in Houston, Texas, which has the particularity of being designed to process heavy Mayan crude oil", considered the coordinator of the postgraduate program at the Mexican Petroleum Institute.

With this panorama, added the professional expert in process design from the Colegio Nacional de Ingenieros Químicos y de Químicos (Coniqq), the strategic challenges of the specialists are focused on increasing the operational reliability and the adequate maintenance of the facilities, recovering and increasing the processing capacity of the refineries in the face of the growth in demand, and ensuring the supply and quality of the diet of the crude oils to be processed in the National Refining System.

It is essential to mention that the generation of professionals graduating from the 1940s to the present faced and resolved the challenges of that time. Now there is a need for a renewal of personnel to tackle current challenges, which are added to those still pending.

Professor Enrique Aguilar emphasized that the use of renewable energies deserves special mention. Currently, it is often suggested lightly that fossil fuels can be replaced by clean energies. However, recent data published by the World Economic Forum in 2022 indicates that, of the total energy produced on the planet, oil contributes 31%, coal 26%, and gas 24%, summing up to 81%, while renewable energy accounts for only 5%.

"Although electric cars already exist today, it's not just about closing one valve and opening another. Technology has its pace, and discoveries and paradigms happen gradually. Currently, hydroelectric and nuclear energy each have a 7% presence, and renewable fuels make up only 5%. We are still far away, perhaps about three decades, from achieving at least a 50/50 balance and thinking about a significant substitution," he warned.

However, he commented that there is hope amid all the problems facing the oil industry at the moment. Current technology, integrated into the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution and applied effectively, can help address the technological challenges of energy production and distribution with digital tools such as Big Data, the Internet of Things, cybersecurity, or augmented reality, among others.

Finally, Professor Enrique Aguilar Rodríguez pointed out that history demonstrates the limitless capacity of the human brain, which has always managed to overcome the challenges and difficulties threatening the human species. "This time, it will do so in matters of energy, global warming, and climate change," he concluded.

Selección Gaceta Politécnica #169. (December 31st, 2023). IPN Imagen Institucional: Read the full magazine in Spanish here.