Iranian Specialists Find Solution to Optimize, Build Large Oil Tanks

“To store oil in larger volumes, instead of building two 500,000-barrel tanks, one million-barrel tanks can be built. The construction of this type of tanks will be cheaper but there is a need to import high-strength steel so that the thickness of the walls of common tanks does not exceed the specified technically-required limit and does not have a problem of welding. Access to this steel is not always possible and economic due to its use in heavy, military and nuclear industries,” said Mostafa Massoudi, a faculty member of the Civil Engineering department of Khajeh Nasir Toosi University of Technology and the project’s manager.

“To settle this challenge, we kept the thickness of the oil storage tanks lower than the technical limit because if the thickness of the steel sheets is higher than a certain limit, they cannot be welded; therefore, we used reinforced tanks,” he added.

“We strengthened the walls of the tanks, and no longer needed access to high thickness steel sheets,” Massoudi said.

“In this project, we used vertical stiffeners that do not interfere with firefighting requirements. Usually, in the oil industry, if we want to make the smallest change, it needs a lot of careful investigation so that it does not interfere with other requirements,” he underlined.

Earlier this year, a knowledge-based company in Iran also succeeded in designing and building a top drive drilling device used for drilling oil and gas wells to a depth of over 4,000 meters.

“The top drive device is one of the most important and up-to-date equipment in the drilling industry which is used for drilling and connecting or disconnecting drilling pipes with a different function and it has replaced the old drilling and pipe laying machines,” said Abbas Ali Gorji, the managing director of the knowledge-based Noavaran Taksaz San’at company.

He added that in recent decades, the dominant method for drilling offshore has been the use of this equipment, adding that at present, drilling with a top drive is much faster and safer, specially for hard ground on land or onshore areas.

“Top drive is a portable device that is used in different rigs. The ability to move the top drive properly and quickly on different rigs increases the speed of drilling, which has increased its application in the world's oil industry,” Gorji said.

He stressed that activities of his company in making top drive device are all based on the latest and state-of-the-art technology in drilling industry.

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