The sixth Sour Oil and Gas Advanced Technology conference in Abu Dhabi drew a record turnout ahead of the Shah sour gas field development plan kicking into action
Saif Ahmed Al Ghafli, chief executive officer of the newly formed Abu Dhabi Gas Development Company Limited welcomed a record conference turnout for the sixth instalment of SOGAT in the UAE capital last month.
Presentations on sulphur recovery and sulphur handling experiences, corrosion management in handling sour gas, and new technologies for sour gas processing dominated the proceedings, and an impressive line up of industry experts revealed the challenges for dealing with increasingly sour reserves, a critical issue for the Middle East’s upstream community.
“Various projects in North America, Russia, Kazakhstan and China are giving rise to technology improvements in understanding complexities in well completion, hydrate presentation, oil-gas-water separation, sour gas dew point control and gas compression, which are all relevant to ongoing developments here in Abu Dhabi,” said Al Ghafli.
The opening sessions were led by Ismail Alami of Saudi Aramco, who gave a detailed presentation of the Wasit Gas Plant, the newest sour gas development project in Saudi Arabia. “The new Wasit Gas Plant will provide grass-roots facilities for gas sweetening, dehydration, sulphur recovery and sale gas delivery and industrial support facilities to process 2500 MMSCFD of Arabiyah and Hasbah non associated gas fields,” revealed Alami.
“In 2009 the volume of gas to be produced from the Arabiyah Field was increased increased from 1000 to 1200 MMSCFD and the volume of gas produced from Hasbah was also increased from 800 MMSCFD to 1300 MMSCFD – which necessitated the careful consideration of how the 12% sour gas was to be processed to feed the Jubail Industrial complex,” he added.
Alami said that a Jacobs and Shell proposal to adopt Sulfinol-M technology for gas sweetening and enrichment was selected.
Rajesh Shetty of Qatargas Operating Company Limited delivered an excellent presentation on the lessons learned during commissioning and start up in Qatargas trains 4 and 5.
Last year Qatargas started up the two largest LNG trains in the world, each with a capacity of 7.8 million tonnes per annum. These trains include integrated gas treatment facilities consisting of acid gas removal (AGR) unit using BASF aMDEA for removal of H2S and CO2, mole sieves with a Selexol regeneration unit for removal of mercaptans, a Flexsorb acid gas enrichment unit and a sulphur recovery unit with tail gas treating.
“All treating units have demonstrated operation at designed capacity and a successful performance test has been executed. Commissioning and statt up of Train 5 was significantly enhanced by the incorporation of lessons learnt from Train 4,” explained Shetty. The critical, and much-talked about issue of sulphur handling relating to the Shah sour gas field was addressed in part by Abdalla Hamad Almuhairi and Ken Lunsford of Abu Dhabi Gas Development Co and Nick Lenstra of Worley Parsons.
Historically, buried liquid sulphur pipelines presented engineering and operational challenges due to the high deferential temperature between the pipeline and surrounding soil, and the unique characteristics of sulphur. “A fundamental problem with buried, hot pipelines is the elevated operating temperature. The transport of liquid sulphur must be done at temperatures between approximately 115º C and 152º C to accommodate the unique characteristics of elemental sulphur,” explained Lenstra.
On the sidelines of the conference Saif Al Ghafli told Oil & Gas Middle East that discussions were ongoing between Union Railways and ADNOC, a 60% stakeholder in the Abu Dhabi Gas Development Company, over whether an overland rail option may prove more sensible.
“These discussions are happening directly between the two companies, but the original FEED study was carried out for the pipeline option. If a rail solution is selected the granulation plant will be moved to the Shah processing site instead of Ruwais, where it was originally planned to be.”
Al Ghafli explained that whilst to date the only EPC award has been the early works and utilities package (won by Abu Dhabi’s Al Jaber Group), the principal eight EPC packages would be awarded “in the coming weeks”. The project, which was originally slated to cost in the region of $13 billion has been able to take advantage of significant depreciation in project costs. “The owners are very happy with the current pricing and we expect announcements and awards to follow very soon,” he said.
