American Petroleum Institute

Manual of Petroleum Measurement Standards Chapter 12 - Calculation of Petroleum Quantities Section 2 - Calculation of Petroleum Quantities Using Dynamic Measurement Methods and Volumetric Correction Factors Part 5 - Calculation of Base Prover Volume by Master Meter Method - First Edition
 N MPMS 12.2.5

Annotation

This part provides standardized calculation methods for the quantification of liquids and the determination of base prover volumes under defined conditions, regardless of the point of origin or destination or units of measure required by governmental customs or statute. The criteria contained in this document allows different entities using various computer languages on different computer hardware (or manual calculations) to arrive at identical results using the same standardized input data.

This document also specifies the equations for computing correction factors, rules for rounding, including the calculational sequence, and discrimination levels to be employed in the calculations. No deviations from these specified equations are permitted, since the intent of this document is to establish a rigorous standard.

Purpose

When most of the older standards were written, mechanical desk calculators were widely used for calculating measurement documentation, and tabulated values were used more widely than is the case today. Rules for rounding and the choice of how many figures to enter in each calculation step were often made on the spot. As a result, different operators obtained different results from the same data.

This multi-part publication consolidates and standardizes calculations pertaining to metering petroleum liquids using turbine or displacement meters and clarifies terms and expressions by eliminating local variations of such terms. The purpose of standardizing calculations is to produce the same unbiased answer from the given data. For different operators to obtain identical results from the same data, the rules for sequence, rounding and discrimination of figures (or decimal places) must be defined.