Abstract

The end point of a PSC's field operation is selling the oil, and the revenue of a PSC depends on the quantity of oil that they have sold. At this point the accuracy of the oil quantity measurement becomes very important, because it affects the company's revenue directly. Errors in oil quantity measurement will cause losses to the company. Hudbay Oil has been operating a metering system for custody transfer in the Malacca Strait PSC since 1984. During the six year periods, Hudbay has learned much about the implementation of an accurate crude oil measurement system. Hudbay's experience confirmed that the accuracy of the metering system can be improved by improving the accuracy of temperature compensators.

Since July 1988 Hudbay has had the approval of the Directorate General of Migas and Metrology to use CTC-65 ( an electronic temperature compensator ) to replace the Automatic Temperature & Gravity Selector ( ATG ).

A set of lab tests and field trials have proved that the CTC-65 has better accuracy than the ATG, and as a consequence, the accuracy of the whole metering system is improved.

This paper describes Hudbay's experience of using CTC-65 to improve the accuracy of the crude export metering system.