Environmental Leadership through Flare Optimization and Operations Excellence

摘要

The objective of this paper is to describe innovative process and tool developed for gas flaring reduction through Plant Optimization in order to meet state regulations. According to Republic of Kazakhstan Laws, flaring of any substances during oil & gas operational activities needs to be logged and reported. Kashagan Field facilities are extensive, using approximately 260 valves connected to 2 Onshore and 3 Offshore Flare stacks Over a reporting period, a valve can be opened and closed multiple times. Based on characteristics of the valve (valve type, pressure differences, valve opening percentage), the volume can be estimated for each release of gas (i.e. Flaring Event). The following are the challenges that NCOC faces during flaring: 1. Reasons for a flaring event need to be captured and the flaring events need to be managed to properly report the Flaring data against license constraints. 2. Estimated volumes should be reconciled with calibrated measurements of total (at Flare Stack) flare volume taken from calibrated meters, entered in Hydrocarbon Accounting System (Tieto EC System). 3. Composition needs to be derived from flare gas sources (valves). Temperature and Pressure data to calculate Flaring Volumes are taken from Real-time Historian (OSIsoft PI System). This calculated data is reconciled against actual Flare meter value from EC. In the end, we have reconciled actual data for each valve to report to the Government bodies. Flare events reporting is very critical for oil & gas business due to high environmental impact that costs North Caspian Operating Company N.V. (NCOC) considerable amount of money. Precision and accuracy of flare compositions reporting improves cost effectiveness. In future, this kind of analytics approach can be implemented for surveillance and reporting of another Oil & Gas operations outcome, water usage and disposal.