THE INCREASE OF HEAVY OILS OCCURRENCE, THE STUDY OF ITS CHARACTERISTICS AND IMPACTS IN THE PRODUCTION, TRANSPORT AND REFINING OPERATIONS

The petroleum is the main component of the world energetic matrix. Like this, it is natural the concern as for the exhaustion and the decrease of the oil reserves quality. On the other hand, the discovery of new oil wells maintains the hope in the continuity of the industry of the petroleum. The subject to analyze is that the discovery, of new oils reserves, it is constituted of oils with some characteristics very different from the characteristics of the conventional ones, whose chemical and physical chemical properties were adopted as calculation base for the project and operation of the most varied types of equipments of the current refineries. Like this it appeared the denomination of non conventional oils for some of the new and gigantic reserves discoveries. The great Fields that evidence these characteristics are the ones with heavy oils in Russian, Kazakhstan, China, Venezuela, Canada, Alaska and Brazil. These heavy oils with API degree below 22o have high viscosity value, they can present acidity, present varied sulfurous compounds content, increase of the metals content and larger heavy fractions production. The non conventional oils present rheological properties very different from the same properties of the conventional oils, mostly regarding the viscosity and to the density, whose values influence directly in the piping project, valves and pumps, among other equipments, of the so much operating system in the production phase as in the pumping, transport and processing of the non conventional oils. To overcome these technological obstacles, new such alternatives appeared as the pumping in core flow system that reduces very much the pressure drop through the two-phase flow for the piping, and the upgrading process, that it transforms heavy oils in synthetic ones, susceptible to be processed by the traditional refineries. Thus, the end of the petroleum era is far from ending, giving time so that the researches of the energetic alternative sources generate products capable to integrate efficiently the world energetic matrix.