It is one thing to transfer ownership between seller and buyer when the item sold comes in discrete units. It’s another when it is a free-flowing fluid through pipes. In the process industries, this ownership transfer is known as custody transfer. Wikipedia defines it:

Custody Transfer in the oil and gas industry refers to the transactions involving transporting physical substance from one operator to another. This includes the transferring of raw and refined petroleum between tanks and tankers; tankers and ships and other transactions. Custody transfer in fluid measurement is defined as a metering point (location) where the fluid is being measured for sale from one party to another. During custody transfer, accuracy is of great importance to both the company delivering the material and the eventual recipient, when transferring a material.^[1]

Custody transfer has been the subject of numerous posts here on the blog. It is also a subject covered in several workshops at the upcoming Emerson Exchange conference in Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas. I’ll highlight one presentation by Emerson’s Patrick Truesdale, a Principal Consultant and Sudhir Jain, a Senior Consultant on the Oil & Gas industry team. We’ve shared some stories of Patrick and Sudhir’s work in the upstream and downstream petrochemical industries.

Their workshop is titled, How to Assess Risk of Measurement Uncertainty with Custody Measurements. The abstract:

This presentation will outline Emerson’s methodology for assuring a pacesetter hydrocarbon management practice within a refining company. Best practices and standards to be utilized will be summarized together with how to evaluate risk from measurement uncertainty and identification of areas for improvement together with the actual examples of potential benefit calculations. Major deficiencies and losses were identified having significant financial impact on two major refining corporations will be presented.

Emerson participates in many industry measurement standards and insures that our custody and fiscal measurements comply with all recognized industry standards worldwide. A measurement assurance approach has been developed and applied to a number of clients to assess the overall risk that enable developed of a cost effective custody improvement program.

Benefits from two major studies will be presented while respecting customer confidentiality – one is a National Oil Company and second is an Independent Oil Company.

If you’re business involves custody transfer and you want to be current on the standards and best practices to help reduce risk and if you’ll be with us at the Emerson Exchange conference, check out one of their workshops. According to the Personal Scheduler Tool session catalog, they’ll be held Tuesday, October 1 at 1pm and repeated on Thursday, October 3 at 11am.