Editorial comment
A. Blume, Managing Editor
Adrienne.Blume@GulfPub.com
Small-scale gas processing projects are reaching a broader audience as companies seek niche solutions for monetizing stranded and associated gas reserves. In areas where infrastructure is inadequate to process associated gas and deliver it to market, such as newer and more remote shale oil and gas plays in the US, these gas reserves are often flared.
Flaring restrictions require new solutions. Stricter regulations are discouraging gas flaring in many of these shale plays. For example, the North Dakota Industrial Commission approved, in July of last year, a policy to minimize the volume of gas flared from shale oil wells in the Bakken and Three Forks shale formations.
If oil producers fail to capture enough gas at the wellhead, then limits are placed on oil production volumes. The Commission aims to reduce flaring to 15% in 1Q 2016 and to 5%–10% by 4Q 2020, from 23% in 2015.
The policy provides a strong financial nudge to producers to implement gas gathering systems to collect gas from the wellsite and transport it to gas processing plants.
Small-scale plugs the processing gap. In cases where no gas processing plant is located nearby, small-scale processing plants can be assembled onsite, from prefabricated modules (Fig. 1), to collect and process the gas.
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Fig. 1. Modular skids for a small-scale LNG plant are constructed in a factory |
The new and scaled-down technologies on which these plants are based provide alternative ways of producing synthetic crude oil, transportation fuels and chemicals. The modular construction plans reduce project costs and timelines for the production of saleable products, such as LNG or GTL fuels.
Processing capacity can be easily increased by installing additional modular units, and the fuels produced can be used in local transportation networks. The gas can also be used as fuel for onsite power generation at shale oil and gas operations.
Other alternative solutions involve the establishment of a small-scale network to gather, process and transport gas from the wellsite to local markets. Transportation is accomplished with the aid of trucks. This solution, as well as several others developed in recent years to address opportunities to monetize flared and stranded gas reserves, are discussed in this issue’s special report.
With several companies preparing to transition from the pilot and demonstration phases to the commercial phase, the small-scale GTL and LNG arenas are gearing up to make significant inroads into localized fuel markets. GP
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