Natural_Gas_pipeline_systems-from_the_wellhead_to_the_consumer

The

oil and gas industry The petroleum industry, also known as the oil industry or the oil patch, includes the global processes of exploration, extraction, refining, transportation (often by oil tankers and pipelines), and marketing of petroleum products. The largest ...

is usually divided into three major components:

upstream Upstream may refer to: * Upstream (bioprocess) * ''Upstream'' (film), a 1927 film by John Ford * Upstream (networking) * ''Upstream'' (newspaper), a newspaper covering the oil and gas industry * Upstream (petroleum industry) * Upstream (software ...

, midstream and downstream. The midstream sector involves the transportation (by

pipeline Pipeline may refer to: Electronics, computers and computing * Pipeline (computing), a chain of data-processing stages or a CPU optimization found on ** Instruction pipelining, a technique for implementing instruction-level parallelism within a s ...

, rail, barge, oil tanker or truck), storage, and wholesale marketing of crude or refined petroleum products. Pipelines and other transport systems can be used to move crude oil from production sites to

refineries A refinery is a production facility composed of a group of chemical engineering unit processes and unit operations refining certain materials or converting raw material into products of value. Types of refineries Different types of refineries ar ...

and deliver the various refined products to downstream distributors. Natural gas pipeline networks aggregate gas from natural gas purification plants and deliver it to downstream customers, such as local utilities. The midstream operations are often taken to include some elements of the upstream and downstream sectors. For example, the midstream sector may include

natural gas processing Natural-gas processing is a range of industrial processes designed to purify raw natural gas by removing impurities, contaminants and higher molecular mass hydrocarbons to produce what is known as ''pipeline quality'' dry natural gas. Natural gas ...

plants that purify the raw natural gas as well as removing and producing elemental sulfur and natural gas liquids (NGL) as finished end-products.

Service providers

* Barge companies * Railroad companies * Trucking and hauling companies * Pipeline transport companies * Logistics and technology companies *

Transloading Transloading, also known as cross-docking, is the process of transferring a shipment from one mode of transportation to another. It is most commonly employed when one mode cannot be used for the entire trip, such as when goods must be shipped in ...

companies * Terminal developers and operators

Midstream in ISO standards

ISO 20815 ISO 20815 is the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standard for production assurance and reliability management in the petroleum, petrochemical and natural gas industries. 3.1.27 midstream
business category involving the

processing Processing is a free graphical library and integrated development environment (IDE) built for the electronic arts, new media art, and visual design communities with the purpose of teaching non-programmers the fundamentals of computer programming ...

and transportation sectors of petroleum industry.ISO
ISO 20815
accessed 6 June 2018 ::''Examples: transportation pipelines, terminals, gas processing and treatment,

LNG Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is natural gas (predominantly methane, CH4, with some mixture of ethane, C2H6) that has been cooled down to liquid form for ease and safety of non-pressurized storage or transport. It takes up about 1/600th the volu ...

, LPG, and GTL.''

References

External links

"NOV — Midstream Page"
{{petroleum-stub Business terms Petroleum transport Oil storage Natural gas Petroleum industry

Service providers

Midstream in ISO standards

See also

References

External links