Dealing with Condensate in a Rich Gathering System

摘要

New projects often arise quickly and may stem from a variety of different scenarios. In today’senvironment, each operator wants to make sure they are capturing as much high BTU product aspossible while keeping volatile organic compound, VOC, emissions within permitted levels. Oneopportunity that many of today’s operators have implemented or are evaluating is condensatestabilization. In the past, capital and operating expenses required for stabilization could havebeen cost prohibitive but today’s marketplace provides a perfect opportunity to add to theoperator’s top line while providing a payback that is appealing to everyone. In many cases thereis a potential monetary gain if a condensate stabilizer is implemented with capital andconstruction being the only costs. Once the return on investment, ROI, is compiled it is oftenproven to have a rapid payback period. This type of ROI cannot be overlooked and in manycases the project is approved and goes into the front end engineering design phase. Theseprojects prove to be economically beneficial to the operator while providing an operationalbenefit in the form of reducing the overall VRU requirement, by retaining as much condensate inthe liquid phase as possible, and reducing the load on the downstream cryogenic plant.This paper will be based on a real scenario in the Woodford Shale around Coalgate, Oklahoma,where condensate volumes were expected to increase and facilities had to be installed to handleand process the new volumes effectively and economically. The actual volumes, compositions,and final design have been changed to protect the privacy of the operator. The intent is to givethe reader a thorough look into the considerations that need to be incorporated into this type ofproject and allow them to minimize the time required to take a project from conceptual design tooperation. Since the design basis has been changed as mentioned above, this paper will take theapproach of developing a new conceptual design based on the new conditions. The concept andprocess will demonstrate how this type of project needs to be setup and executed. By the end ofthis paper the audience will have learned about all involved areas of work and have a betterunderstanding of what would be required for them to carry out a project of their own.