Before the 1990's, about 90% of the crudes produced in China had a wax content of over 10%. Pipelining these waxy crudes has been carried out by means of crude heating together with pipeline operation optimization. Changes in the Chinese economic system and petroleum exploitation in northwestern China require that pipelining economics and reliability be improved. Therefore, pipelining techniques have been developed to improve flow properties of waxy crudes in order to be adaptable to low throughput operation of the old pipelines in eastern China and to meet the requirement of the operation of the new longer-distance pipelines in northwestern China.Care is also taken in coordination of pipeline transportation with crude production, refining and marketing for improving the overall economic efficiency. This paper introduces the technical characteristics of the development of waxy crude pipelining in China.
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