🇺🇸United States

Excess pumping energy, drag‑reducing agent, and operating costs from inefficient schedules

3 verified sources

Definition

Non‑optimized pipeline and terminal schedules drive higher pumping energy and drag‑reducing agent (DRA) consumption by failing to account for time‑varying power prices, optimal pump sequencing, and flow profiles. Case‑study vendors report that use of integrated PipelineScheduler/TerminalScheduler plus PipelineOptimizer significantly cuts operating costs compared to baseline manual scheduling.

Key Findings

  • Financial Impact: Emerson reports that using PipelineOptimizer to reduce electric and DRA usage can "easily" save a pipeline operator substantial operating costs; on a 1,000‑mile liquids line, energy/DRA typically run into tens of millions of dollars annually, so a conservative 5–10% avoidable waste implies roughly $2–5M per year attributable to poor scheduling.[3][4]
  • Frequency: Daily
  • Root Cause: Schedulers lack integrated optimization tools that simultaneously consider batch timing, pump station operation, inventory constraints, and power tariffs, so they run pumps at non‑optimal times and flows, consuming more energy and chemical additives than necessary.[3][4][6]

Why This Matters

This pain point represents a significant opportunity for B2B solutions targeting Oil and Coal Product Manufacturing.

Affected Stakeholders

Pipeline schedulers, Pipeline control room operators, Energy management teams, Terminal operations managers, Midstream finance and cost controllers

Deep Analysis (Premium)

Financial Impact

$1–3M annually in missed arbitrage opportunities from energy price volatility; poor DRA dosing from suboptimal flow timing; time spent on manual analysis (500+ hours/year) with marginal optimization gain • $1.2M-$3.5M annually from inefficient batch sequencing, DRA waste, product contamination rework, and energy overages in chemical supply logistics • $1.2M-$3M annually from non-optimized high-sea states energy waste; over-DRA-dosing for marine loads due to uncertainty

Unlock to reveal

Current Workarounds

Excel spreadsheets with manual pump sequencing; email-based coordination with trading teams; memory-based energy rate decisions • Excel spreadsheets, email chains, manual terminal flow calculations, ad-hoc pump sequencing based on staff memory • Excel-based nomination scheduling; email chains for movement coordination; manual pump sequencing notes; paper logbooks for power pricing lookups

Unlock to reveal

Get Solutions for This Problem

Full report with actionable solutions

$99$39
  • Solutions for this specific pain
  • Solutions for all 15 industry pains
  • Where to find first clients
  • Pricing & launch costs
Get Solutions Report

Methodology & Sources

Data collected via OSINT from regulatory filings, industry audits, and verified case studies.

Evidence Sources:

Related Business Risks

Sub‑optimal pipeline and terminal schedules causing lost throughput and revenue

If scheduling optimization improves operational and planning efficiency by 41% and profitability by 51% for a Fortune 500 pipeline/terminal operator, even a conservative 5–10% under‑throughput on a 500,000 bbl/day network at $2/bbl margin equates to roughly $18–36M per year in lost contribution margin before optimization.

Product contamination and interface reprocessing due to poor batch sequencing

Scheduling research for real‑world pipelines models interface contamination and reprocessing as a significant cost term; for a large refined‑products line, even 0.5–1% of shipped volume downgraded or re‑processed at $50/bbl value loss on 200,000 bbl/day implies roughly $18–36M per year of avoidable quality‑related costs if sequencing is not optimized.[4][6]

Delayed billing and revenue recognition from fragmented scheduling and accounting data

If scheduling integration improves profitability by 51% for a Fortune 500 operator and part of that is faster, more accurate billing and reduced disputes, a conservative estimate of 2–3 days reduction in average settlement on $1B of annual movements equates to financing and dispute‑related costs in the low single‑digit millions per year before optimization.

Idle pipeline and tank capacity from manual, non‑optimal scheduling

If operational efficiency increases by 41% after implementing optimized scheduling for a large pipeline/terminal network, even attributing only a fraction of that to added throughput suggests multi‑million‑dollar annual value; for a 300,000 bbl/day line, 3–5% avoidable idle capacity at $1.50/bbl tariff is roughly $5–8M per year in lost capacity monetization.

Regulatory non‑compliance exposure from inadequate scheduling visibility and reconciliation

Regulatory penalties for misreported volumes, tax irregularities, or imbalance violations can range from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars per incident; recurring reconciliation deficiencies in a large midstream operator could plausibly expose them to multi‑million‑dollar risk over several years, though precise figures are case‑specific.

Opportunistic misallocations and unauthorized usage enabled by opaque scheduling and tracking

In large multiproduct systems moving millions of barrels per month, even 0.1% undetected diversion or misallocation at $70/bbl could imply several million dollars per year in potential exposure; weak scheduling controls increase the difficulty of detecting such discrepancies, although concrete public fraud cases tied purely to scheduling are limited.

Request Deep Analysis

🇺🇸 Be first to access this market's intelligence