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77 comments on US Natural Gas: Lessons from BP's Tight Gas Facility in Wamsutter WY

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elwoodelmore on June 3, 2008 - 7:56pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

"do the solar panels provide ALL the electricity needed to run the pumps?"

gas wells are not usually equiped with pumps.
if you are refering to compressors, no these are fueled with ng(hundreds or thousands of hp).
it would appear that the solar panels are for monitoring and control equipment.

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Gail the Actuary on June 3, 2008 - 8:42pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

What you say sounds right. I received a copy of one of the presentations this afternoon, and was trying to understand what it says about electrification.

According to the presentation, electricity is used for monitoring and for what BP calls "automation". Automation may be monitoring, translated to some action when the monitored results are out of a specified range--perhaps what you call "control equipment".

In the description of electrical use, I also found reference to something saying "power for gas lift pilots". BP has a pilot program in which it is temporarily pumping some of the gas back in (I think) in an attempt to raise production. This is related to deliquification. See slide 14 of the presentation. This may be another use of the electricity.

You mention natural gas being used to run compressors. One use of the compressors would be to make gas move through the pipes. Would compression also provide power for the separation process (into condensate, natural gas, water, and waste gasses), or does this happen some other way? I was originally under the impression that electricity was somehow used in the separation process, but I could be wrong on that. Perhaps it was only the pilot gas lift problem that was being referred to.

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plucky underdog on June 3, 2008 - 10:43pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

In other installations that I've seen, the solar cells provide power for two purposes...

  • Wellhead instrumentation (two or three pressures, temperature, a few valve positions, intrusion alarm/CCTV) and associated telemetry (line of sight or cellular microwave)
  • Valve actuators - the solar cells power a small hydraulic pump that charges an accumulator, enough to hold the wellhead and downhole safety valves open and operate the wing and choke valves for a few cycles - the latter might be electrical, don't know for sure.

    • This requires very little power. You could put a small genset at the wellpad, but that would be equally expensive, less reliable (more moving parts), more polluting (noise as well as CO2), it would cut into your revenue stream, and (important!) it would have problems providing cold start service (no gas => no power).

    The solar cells and microwave save you from having to run power and C&I cabling to every wellpad - a considerable cost (and theft risk!) in such a geographically spread-out operation. Solar couldn't provide anything like enough power for any serious process or lift energy input, though you might be able to do something along those lines with windmills.

    "Pilots" in Gail's context probably refers to pilot valves (small valves which allow the main valves to be opened by flow or process pressure).

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    Nate Hagens on June 3, 2008 - 9:45pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

    thanks. very interesting.
    I wonder what % of our gas (conv/unconv) is off the grid like that and requires ecosystem services (solar flows) to harvest fossil fuels....?

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    Gail the Actuary on June 3, 2008 - 10:40pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

    Clearly everything offshore is off grid. I think they pretty much burn natural gas for power, though.

    I am not sure how one would go about quantifying the rest. Most of the Colorado/Wyoming/Utah/Montana natural gas production would be off grid, and much of Canada that is not in major cities.

    Natural gas wells are so spread out that it probably does not make sense to string electricity to them, unless it is already there (Barnett Shale in Dallas?). I would wonder if some of the shale gas production from Eastern states will end up being off grid. It is very expensive and time-consuming to get electrical grid wires put up, if wires are not there already.

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    wkwillis on June 4, 2008 - 2:36am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

    Pennsylvania is so heavily populated and has such extensive infrastructure (from power to phones to water to gas to taverns for the workers) that you can handle things pretty well. The gas in Pennsylvania has the advantage that it is very close to markets and does not have to depend on a pipeline to move it.
    They sometimes don't even bring the gas to market, they just power a diesel generator with the power on site for factories, schools, etc. The waste heat comes in handy during winters.

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    Gail the Actuary on June 4, 2008 - 9:54am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

    You seem to be talking about building electric power plants (often with cogeneration, to share waste heat) at the location of the gas. I knew that this was done with coal; I hadn't thought about it with gas.

    The thing that then needs to be built is electric transmission lines. I have seen comments that when new gas power plants are built, the plants can be up in 18 months but the transmission lines can take 5 to 10 years. Hopefully the problem is not that bad, but lagging transmission lines can be a problem.

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    elwoodelmore on June 4, 2008 - 9:27am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

    i think your questions were pretty well answered by the posters upthread.

    bp is using gas lift, meaning that some of the wells are producing liquids, either free water or condensate. in a gas lift operation, dry gas is injected into the tubing casing anulus to lighten and accelerate the flow stream, allowing the well to flow. this would require a compressor on site or nearby.

    dehydration would require electrical imputs as well. dehydration is probably accomplished either by cooling the gas stream or by desiccation(glycol absorption). in a desiccation cycle, heating would also be required. the heat cycle would be fired by ng. another means of dehydration uses a "molecular seive". at the very least electricity would be used for operating the process and control equipment.

    those are probably dehydrators shown in the photo.

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    77 comments on US Natural Gas: Lessons from BP's Tight Gas Facility in Wamsutter WY

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