Energy Case Studies

Building on strong past engagements, one of the largest operators in Canada’s growing oil sands industry engaged Trindent to assess the efficiency of operation within its maintenance services group.

HOW WE MADE IT HAPPEN

Enforced crane shop cancellation and confirmation process, leading to 59% reduction in rental crane costs:

• Freed up company-owned resources to reduce unnecessary rental crane bookings.
• Reported out on reservations that were not utilized for each maintenance area.
• Promoted active communication between crane shop and users.

Improved reporting and management systems:

• Installed area and team dashboards.
• Upgraded daily activity sheet to track barriers.
• Implemented weekly executive level reports to increase operational performance visibility.

Improved contractor short interval management by frontline supervisors, leading to 18% reduction in contractor FTE:

• Reported out on planned vs. unplanned permits to reduce contractor time spent on permit request
• Standardized duration and timing for contractor breaks to avoid unnecessary travel time

“Trindent’s team helped us to establish processes and performance management tools which resulted in cultivating an active and effective management environment. Financially speaking, the engagement proved to be successful and sustainable.”

– Vice President, Maintenance

A diversified energy company with renewable fuels, petroleum refining and marketing business throughout the USA South-Midwest engaged Trindent to create and develop an industry leading hydrocarbon loss control program and reduce custody transfer losses.

HOW WE MADE IT HAPPEN

Sediment & Water

• Installed a Sediment & Water (S&W) tracking Dashboard to monitor Crude Quality and corrective actions that resulted in 56% less S&W paid at the price of Crude.
• Achieved accurate and consistent S&W analysis and $7,800,000 in annualized savings from baseline.
• Established S&W witnessing checklists per API and ASTM standards to ensure measurement best practices are followed by 3rd parties.

Gathered Crude Measurements

• Installed a witnessing checklist which reduced Truck Driver’s Crude Ticket Errors by 54%.
• Implemented an automated, integrated WellTrax tickets dashboard that reduced manual data entry efforts by 80% to ensure sustainability which resulted in $1,180,000 annualized savings.

Meter Measurements

• Installed a standardized process to reduce variance between Bill of Lading (BOL) and actual receipt volumes which has recovered $230,000 in annualized loss.
• Built and implemented 200+ Meter Factor Control Charts (MFCC) to monitor deviations in 106 meters, which are used to initiate maintenance, proving, and meter correction actions.

“The Trindent team collaborated effectively with our Leadership team and key stakeholders to develop and implement best practices to improve refinery mass balance. Trindent has implemented a sustainable solution and they have set us up for success moving forward. It was a pleasure working with the Trindent team.“

– Vice President, Refinery Operations

A leading refinery in Canada, with already top-quartile Energy Intensity Index (Ell) rankings engaged Trindent to push the frontiers of their energy efficiency with the aim of seeking Energy Star certification while simultaneously reducing their GHG emissions. Over the course of six months, Trindent developed and implemented over 170 changes that reduced natural gas consumption by 4.5% and electrical consumption by 3.7%. The engagement was not reliant on any capital expenditures or software.

HOW WE MADE IT HAPPEN

• Designed and implemented near real-time dashboards to monitor natural gas and electricity consumption, versus refinery forecasted demand.
• Implemented area-by-area sub-metering of electricity to promote ownership and awareness.
• Reduced flue gas quantities by repairing leaks, saving 2.2% and implemented advanced flue gas monitoring processes.
• Reduced excess air in boilers by optimizing fuel-to air ratios to improve boiler efficiency by 1.1%.
• Optimized the reflux ratio of the distillation column to produce energy savings of $1.2M by optimizing characteristics of the feed.
• Developed purchasing and repair specifications for motors (pumps, air compressors, fans and other applications) to ensure that motor speeds, loads and sizing were most efficiently selected.
• Reduced steam costs by $3.2M by implementing a scheduling approach that assigned priority to boilers that were more efficient.
• Implemented solutions to match natural gas consumption with forecasted demand and identify variances using statistical process control. Reduced electricity consumption by implementing over 60 changes to usage patterns in the plant such as lighting controls, and gradually replacing with LED lighting.
• Changed the FCC pumparound process to reflect changes over time to optimize energy efficiency.
• Saved 7,900 MMBtu per year in natural gas by optimizing boiler blowdowns that were excessive.

“Trindent helped us significantly on our journey towards energy efficiency. The plant benefitted from over 170 small changes, that had the combined effect of reducing our consumption by $17.3M dollars annually. We are on track to achieve the savings that Trindent cited in the Assessment and feel that everything was recommended would sustain itself. We were suitably impressed to say the least”

– Vice President, Refinery Operations

A North American Refining Corporation engaged Trindent to optimize gasoline blending at one of the largest and most complex refineries in the world, based on our proven successes in giveaway reduction through improvements in the blending value chain and behavioral adjustments at all level of client personnel.

HOW WE MADE IT HAPPEN

Planning & Scheduling Improvement

• Achieved a reduction of 0.5 ON and savings of $17 MM by developing robust regression models to predict uplift in properties upon ethanol additional and dynamically optimizing neat targets to minimize quality giveaway.
• Maximized value of domestic products by securing ancillary credits and optimizing recipes through the operational distribution of sulfur, olefins, and aromatics achieving $5.7 MM by reducing sulfur by 2.0 ppm.
• Implemented a platform for key stakeholders to review blend performance, identify root causes of the high giveaway, discuss opportunities to minimize quality giveaway and ensure awareness at all levels.
• Built state of the art tools by leveraging multiple programming languages and software for performance tracking and monitoring, which improved prediction accuracy to support process and behavioral changes

Measurement Excellence

• Developed a gravimetric Ethanol Hand-Blend Preparation Procedure to minimize the variance of the ethanol blended into gasoline, improve accuracy and generate savings of $4.5 MM
  Installed a tracker to reduce 3rd party testing variation and an escalation process to reduce unnecessary planning buffer and generate $1.2 MM
  Optimized laboratory testing schedule to increase gasoline component testing frequency and promote adoption of best practices in sampling

Operations Excellence

• Developed a performance dashboard tool to track collective variance from targets and implemented a cross- functional review process, resulting in 0.17 ON and 0.28 psi of reduced giveaway and $13 MM savings.
• Leveraged Trindent’s expertise in PI AF to develop real- time blend management tools and control charts to support giveaway reduction decision-making and behavioral changes.
• Developed a dynamic, interactive blend process guideline and tool standardizing pre-blend, during blend monitoring, and blend closure procedures to reduce blend execution variability.
• Designed a comprehensive training program for blenders and shift supervisors in partnership with the client via direct and remote platforms.

“Trindent team was key in building bridges between local operating groups and helping to ensure effective communication around the gasoline blending process at the refinery. These efforts will allow us to continue to capture value going forward and sustain the many improvements enabled by the engagement team.”

– Product Control Manager