Custody Transfer Management in Pipelines

This paper focuses on the technical study of metering systems involved in custody transfer (metering instruments and its patterns) in order to calculate a measurement uncertainty for each component and for the system as a whole. Based on this, a tolerance for the operating balance of each batch is established. This definition applies to monthly balances for all the quantity of product that travels into the pipeline and for kind of it (gasoline, diesel, etc.). This methodology, of managing the custody transfer for the global pipeline and by product, helps to early detections of failures at the metering systems. Also, valorizing the transferred product in the interface between two consecutive batches, the company counts on an economic indicator to improve the batch cut points. In addition, it makes possible to fix the Refinery’s ‘quality giveaway’ (“quality gift”) since the volume of the transferences is related closely to the quality of the transported product. The greater the quality ‘giveaway’, the lower the volume of transferences.