Debottlenecking of existing oil-gas plants brings significant economic benefits

K. Majumdar, Director, Process Solutions Inc., Calgary, Canada  In today’s challenging economic conditions, the debottlenecking of existing oil and gas plants appears very attractive. Most plants have some intrinsic, though mostly hidden, opportunities to boost their production capacities and efficiencies through troubleshooting and debottlenecking. These efforts can be carried out quickly and safely, at a fraction of the cost required to build new facilities of equivalent capacity. Valuable guidelines are offered here for debottlenecking operations, using a successful, real-life case study as an example. It has been more than 2 yr since the meltdown in the petroleum industry that started