Chevron Corporation owns and operates a plant in Le Havre, France. This plant is part of Oronite, which is a subsidiary of the Corporation. Oronite employs more than 2,000 people worldwide in a global organization comprising three regional operations with sales networks that extend to local markets.

 

Oronite develops and markets quality additives, lubricants and chemicals that improve the performance of fuels and lubricants. As with all our facilities, our plant in Le Havre, Gonfreville, France is required to follow a strict program for inspection of the piping systems. To help meet the world’s growing demand for energy, Chevron has actively pursued a strategy to selectively develop technologies through the collaborative efforts of industry, universities, research institutions and governments.

 

Forming strategic partnerships, alliances, and research agreements as well as establishing centres of research excellence has helped Chevron to facilitate broad access to innovative technologies outside the energy industry. By working with national science laboratories, research centres and universities, we have benefited from technologies that can be quickly adapted to oil, gas and other energy operations as well as exposure to highly-talented scientists and researchers who bring new perspectives to the field.

Chevron Oronite

CONSORTIUM

Role in the project and main tasks

CHEVRON is leading WP 7 (Large-scale pilot demonstrations) providing ‘end user’ input for technology integration, interpretation of testing and demonstration results and providing feedback to technology developers.

 

CHEVRON will also contribute with one of the pilot sites (Orotine refinery).

 

In addition, CHEVRON will support as end-users the design of PILOTING platform and the development of associated technologies.

 

Finally, CHEVRON leads Societal, ethical and legal (SoEL) identification task.

Relevant previous experience

The inspection programs are driven by local, regional and national regulators and by strict Chevron standards that the corporation impose to operate facilities with the highest levels of safety and clear understanding of the mechanical integrity. Even when this is a small facility, thousands of kilometres of piping are checked and verified to understand their condition. The inspection plan and selection of points for monitoring are obtained by a process known as Risk Based Inspection (RBI), which includes a clear understanding of the process, material behaviour, and degradation mechanisms.

 

The information gathered during the inspection process allows our Reliability Engineers and Maintenance Groups to know the velocity of corrosion in our circuits and to discover and understand the behaviour of several degradation and damages mechanisms. This data triggers modifications in our processes, preventive measures and replacement of piping systems to avoid leaks or release of product to the environment. All these experience in Risk Based Inspection for refineries will be provided by Chevron.