The WORLD model provides the means to address a wide range of short, medium and long term issues impacting national, regional and global petroleum supply, markets, refining and transportation. WORLD is a detailed linear programming modeling system. It simulates the activities and economics of the world regional petroleum industry against short, medium, and long term horizons. It captures and integrates the interactions that occur in the global petroleum supply industry between:

• crude supply
• non-crudes supply (NGLs, GTLs, oxygenates)
• refining operations
• refining investment
• merchant facilities (MTBE, GTLs)
• transportation of crudes, products and intermediates
• product quality/specifications
• product demand/mix/growth
• market economics and pricing.

With a 13 year track record of analyses, WORLD has been used extensively for global market studies - short and long term, business as usual and emergencies -  and has been applied to detailed national refining/supply system analyses set in a global context. Regional configuration can be readily altered; client formulations focus on their interests. 

Our base representation captures the main world regions and trade flows for general studies.  The 2001 ICF-EnSys US EPA diesel study for the American Petroleum Institute has resulted in a powerful model of the US refining system with global regions and interactions.  In this WORLD version, the US is broken down into 18 refining groups and five supply-demand regions (PADDs I-V). Non-US regions are represented via 6 refining/supply/demand regions. Extensive work to date has included close calibration against year 2000 actual data.  

Current and recent WORLD studies include projections for 2005/6, 2010, 2015 and 2020 based on EIA and other world supply/demand forecasts. 

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WORLD Clients and Usage

WORLD is being used by and for the OPEC Secretariat, the US Energy Information Administration, the American Petroleum Institute, and US oil companies to address issues ranging from fuels regulatory impacts to refining margins, GTL developments to Caspian crude exports, refining process technologies to Kyoto protocol effects. The WORLD Online Brochure lists recent projects.

The WORLD refinery technology database is used as the basis for the Energy Information Administration's NEMS Petroleum Market Module.  EIA also uses WORLD directly for international market studies.  

Back to Top New Developments WORLD Version 5.1 is now available. New features and improvements include: Model tested and proven operationally when expanded to 24 refinery regions (with detailed emphasis on US refining comprising 18 refinery groups across the 5 PADDs plus 6 non-US refining/supply/demand regions). Run times using XpressMP Version 12.1 Barrier under 10 minutes. Model calibrated to 2000 then applied to horizons through 2020. Capital costs for distillate deep desulfurization units reviewed and adjusted to best fit newly commercializing technologies. EnSys report provides background information.  Process unit revamp costs as a percent of new unit now a function of specific refining regions.  Additional flexibility introduced for revamping of distillate desulfurization units to deep HDS/HDA service. Capital cost scaling introduced as a function of refining group/region average refinery size. Enables distinction of capital cost expenditures between finely defined refinery groups.  Logging of regional refining investments, ($billion), import/export movements and other key activities built directly into the matrix and matched to reporting code for flexible extraction of key study information into Excel.  Facility added to allow pipeline capacity expansions for longer range studies New capability for "time stepping" from horizon to horizon.  New capacity additions in each horizon added in to the base capacity for the next horizon.    Back to Top

Availability

WORLD is available on a consulting basis and via licensing from EnSys.

We provide a complete suite of services covering:

• model development
• re-configuration to client needs
• installation
• training 
• support & maintenance
• joint analytical studies
• reports from in-house and public domain studies.