INDUSTRY Insights
THE downstream oil and gas in- dustry is leading the way in pro- viding exciting career opportu-
nities for talented engineers around the
globe. Our industry is critical to the oil
and gas value chain. We refine, manu-
facture and market fuels, lubricants
and petrochemicals for both industrial
and retail consumers. This is our fun-
damental purpose.
How the industry is developing
The downstream industry has certainly developed since I joined in the
mid-1980’s. Nowadays, careers in this
segment of the industry offer exciting
opportunities to produce leading products via revolutionary technology and
processes. The downstream industry
is investing across the world, pushing
the use of technology to produce fuels
and lubricants more efficiently, despite
the ever more difficult feedstocks now
being produced from today’s oil and
gas fields.
In the US Midwest, we at BP have
redeveloped the Whiting Refinery, to
supply fuel to the North American mar-
kets. The multi-billion dollar upgrade
of the facility has just been complet-
ed to ensure that it can
process growing sup-
plies of North Ameri-
can crude oil, including
heavy oil from Canada.
At Whiting we will now
process up to 413,000
barrels per day and pro-
duce enough fuel every
day to run 430,000
cars, 22,000 commer-
cial trucks, 2,000 com-
mercial aircraft, 10,000 tractors and fill
350,000 propane tanks. This upgrade
work has required industry leading talent and ingenuity of process, to ensure
that the refinery can work with the
more challenging feedstock, while having a minimal environmental impact.
Pushing the boundaries
Many misconceptions exist about what
a job in downstream actually entails.
I believe that we offer a wide range of
roles, in a variety of exciting operating
environments. It is not all oily overalls
and heavy machinery; technical and
business staff in downstream have the
opportunity to work with industry-lead-
ing refining technology and experts
within the field.
At Whiting, we have
recently engineered a
way to run the refinery’s gasoline-making
units even during the
planned maintenance of
other parts of the refinery. This first for BP has
ensured that production
can be maintained during downtime and is a
great example of our engineers’ collaborative working–taking an initial idea
all the way through to its implementation. It required rigorous analysis and
thinking to ensure that consequences were fully thought through and all
possible outcomes were taken into
consideration.
At our Hull petrochemicals plant in
the UK, we are leading the way in the
research of new product streams that
will help to form the fuels of the future.
We also manufacture acetic acid and
acetic anhydride, which are used in
textile and plastic manufacturing, as
well as in the pharmaceutical industry and to create bleaches. We produce
half a million tonnes of acetic acid per
‘A Career in Downstream
– What do People in
Downstream Businesses do?’
By Cheryl McKinney, EOR Strategy and Commercial Business Leader, BP
