The crude oil must be stabilised to prevent excessive gassing during storage and to remove water and solids.
[3] Stabilisation involves passing the wellhead fluids through one, two, or three stages of separation operating at successively lower pressure to flash off lighter hydrocarbons and to remove water and solids.
[4] The product is dead crude which is stored in stock tanks operating at just above atmospheric pressure.
[3] Density and viscosity are important property inputs into correlations for pipe-flow calculations.
Other properties such as Molecular Weight, saturated aromatic resin and asphaltene (SARA), refractive index, wax appearance temperature, asphaltene precipitation, and acid number, are also specified at Stock Tank conditions.