[13]2 Minimizing Gas Field Processing –A Way to Improve Economics

[13]2 Minimizing Gas Field Processing –A Way to Improve Economics

With the growing gas demand for the coming years and the rising cost of labour and construction, emphasis has been put on improving the economics of gas projects by reducing the Capital and Operations Expenditure. The result of the considerable on going effort has paved the way for breakthroughs in many different areas of the Processing of Cias.Innovation has enabled the producers to reduce significantly the processing on site. The awareness of the cost of utilities has brought more efficient designs of processes leading also to savings on Capital. This paper reviews some of the areas in which progress has been made and where more is expected to come. This ranges from subsea well head technology, two phase flows, unmanned production, to Research and Development on new products, chemicals and metallurgy. The industry can face the challenge of the coming years with such improvements over the past technology.The perspectives of the world primary energy demand for the years 1990 and 2005 (Fig. 1) indicate that the share of Natural Gas is constantly increasing. This is all the more true for the European gas demand which is expected to increase by 50% by 2010. Analysing both the current situation and the perspective world wide of the gas industry for the next decade, there appears a consistent trend of simultaneous increase in reserves, production and world consumption.As has been highlighted in other sessions of this conference, the Natural Gas Industry will face a serious challenge to meet the spiralling cost of supply in a particularly difficult economic context. Fortu- 1990 2005 Source = EEC Fig. 1. Primary energy world demand. nately for the Natural Gas Industry one of its assets is its ability to challenge constantly its limitations by a continuous effort in Research and Development.In this respect, capital costs have fallen by 25% since 1986 when the drop in oil prices initiated a fundamental reappraisal of everything that was being spent. This reduction has been made possible thanks to a considerable effort of the industry in Research and Development (R&D) to meet the challenges. It is estimated' that a further reduction of 30% in Capex and 50% in Opex could be achieved within the next 20 years.A few years ago, innovation meant improvement of know-how to produce more difficult fields whereas it now means improvement of the latter to produce at a lesser cost.The main parameters affecting cost reduction in projects are the following:–A good project definition–Extended use of satellite developments–Process minimization–Reduction of manning A good project definition.Since pre-project studies only account for a very small amount (circa 0.5%) of the total project

1994-05-29

Duchemin, B.

Verdier, J.

conferencePaper

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