Review of automatic tank gauging for BP Oil New Zealand Limited : a thesis presented to fulfil the requirements of a Masters in Technology, Institute of Technology and Engineering, Massey University, Palmerston North

Abstract

BP Oil New Zealand Ltd (BPONZ) has been in the New Zealand petroleum market since 1946. The company is the retail market leader within New Zealand, as of January 1998, and is always striving to keep ahead of the other three major oil companies, Shell, Caltex and Mobil. In doing so, BPONZ has to constantly invest capital into cost saving technology to sustain the small hold the company has on the market and be competitive. One such technology investment is the remote measurement of petroleum fuel levels in Underground and Aboveground Storage Tanks (USTs and ASTs). These tanks are situated at retail (Service Stations) and commercial (Truckstops) sites around New Zealand. The tanks range in size from 20,000 to 50,000 Litres holding capacity. The remote measurement of fuel levels in the Oil Industry is known as automatic tank gauging. Automatic tank gauging is important to BPONZ Commercial as the division has many remote unmanned sites and regular, manual dipping of the sites is uneconomical for stock control. Tank gauging is the most practical way of managing the fuel stocks at these sites, but whether it is the most feasible way is one of the questions that prompted this thesis.[FROM INTRODUCTION]