Crude oil transportation

Crude oil can be transported from the producing field to the refinery in a variety of conveyances. For onshore production, tank trucks, railroad tank cars, and barges on inland waterways are used to some extent, but pipelines are the dominant mode of transportation. Pipelines are also used to bring production ashore from offshore fields located reasonably near to land.

Fields in very deep water-often employing subsea completions and FPSOs-typically use shuttle tankers to move the crude from the storage tanks in the FPSO hulls to shore. For most export operations around the world, marine tankers are the only choice available.The bulk of the enormous Middle East production, for example, is shipped to all parts of the world in tankers.

Crude oil pipelines have established an excellent environmental record. They are robust systems that seldom fail. When they do fail, the pumps are immediately shut down, holding escaped crude to a minimum.

Marine tankers do not have quite as good as environmental record as pipelines.One problem is simply the huge number of tankers that are on the high seas at any given moment. With an operation that large, some accidents are bound to happen. The most serious incident was the grounding of the EXXON Valdes, a very large crude carrier (VLCC), in Alaskan coastal waters.VLCCs, which haul much of the world’s crude, are essentially huge floating crude tanks that are extremely difficult to stop or maneuver.When they do hit something, the quantity of crude available for release is staggering. To minimize risk, VLCCs are routed as far as possible outside of heavy shipping lanes. Additional transhipment terminals are being constructed around the world for VLCCs to unload out to sea; then pipelines or small shuttle tankers handle the final shipment leg into congested ports. Also, many VLCCs are now being built with double hulls, which provide some protection against impact.

1.2 Сomprehension questions:

1 What is the dominant mode of crude oil transportation?

2 How is crude shipped to all parts of the world?

3 Where is a very large crude carrier situated?

4 Is it difficult to stop or maneuver the huge floating crude tanks?

5 What are additional transhipment terminals being constructed for?

1.3 Translate into Ukrainian in written form. Make all possible questions to the sentences:

1 Crude oil is shipped to the petrochemical plants from around the world in very large tankers and the refined products shipped back around the world in smaller tankers.

2 Since crude is so easy transported by marine tanker, in remote areas of the world the development of a new field generally includes building a pipeline connecting the field to a maring loading terminal.

3 An oil company may use its own tankers to ship to its refinery in Europe or the U.S., but more often it will sell at the terminal to the highly organized and efficient third-party market.