Scamp question... about oil rigs

[BLUEHAWK]

Sir Scamp -

Re: the natural gas that is burned off at some (or all?) oil rigs.

Why can that material not be harvested and put to use?

[Seascamp]

If all is in balance, the flair stacks won?t be burning, only occasionally when there is compressor seal leak to be vented or some precipitate that gets in the gas field intake lines or there is a gulp of sour gas to be vented. Precipitate is like natural kerosene and can raise havoc if not vented. Example; the operators at P.T. Arun, Sumatra, were too busy playing Mahjong to note that about 5 thousand barrels of precipitate got sucked into the gas line and were headed to the LNG compression stages, disaster was in the making, I?m talking a 2km diameter kabooom, including several 100 meter diameter LNG spheres containing 800:1 compressed natural gas. An old hand (from Oklahoma) sprinted from the guest house to the control bunker, in his skivvies mind you, and slammed the emergency shutdown sequencer and just seconds later the flair stacks just gushed precipitate. It just rained kerosene and only seconds later, it would have been raining fire and I wouldn?t be here annoying you good people. I had never been in an upset like that before when about 200,000 hp of LNG compression machinery went in to surge (back pressure exceeds output pressure) and I thought it was an earthquake with all the growling and shaking going on. So in that instance the flair stacks acted as pressure vents but saved our butts. There was some piping and compression seal damage and the whole place stunk of precipitate, including ourselves, but we got back on stream in fairly quick order. Ha, ask me what I think of the game of Mahjong anymore.

Where there is long term flair stack burning it is usually a sign that some maintenance or process moves are needed and if in the US, the EPA fine meter is a runnin, big time. Alberta, Canada, seems to be more tolerant and, in my opinion, the flair stacks burn way too often and way too long. Same with the mid east.

Scamp

[chilidog]

Flair stacks, ha!
We were working in an olefins unit in a Conoco plant south of Alvin, Texas. They wanted to burn some stuff off, but the ignitor failed temporarily. Product spewed out and ran down the side of the flair stack and all over the ground. Then the ignitor decided to work. Woof!! Our stampede looked worse than flailing your arms in a chicken pen and we didn't stop until we were on the far side of the parking lot. It took some hard talking to get us back in there.

Chilidog

[BLUEHAWK]

I see... (I think)

Why is it said that the stuff coming out of those vents is "natural gas"? The TV talking heads constantly and repeatedly (for years) say that what we are seeing burning is "natural gas" which is necessary to burn off so as to prevent pressure building up in the well.

I guess what they don't know they mean is that it is precipitate?

IS there ever ANY "natural gas" associated with the drilling of petroleum?

[Seascamp]

To borrow a line from Forrest Gump, ?An Oil/Gas field is like a box of chocolates, ya never know what you?re going to get?. In general, a young oil field will have some associated pressurization due to vapors or natural gas. Precipitate is a liquid hydro carbon that can be found in gas fields and it is highly undesirable to grab a pocket of that stuff, yikes. Oil and natural gas can be in the same dome and test wells are used to establish who is what and how deep. And sometimes there is no natural well head pressure at all and many of the off shore production rigs use salt water injection to pressurize the dome. Some other land based production rigs use steam injection where the crude is too viscous to pump out and this is found a lot in Texas. Canada has a unique situation where their gas fields yield lots of sour gas and special sulphur stripping processes are needed. Looking down on the Alberta fields from 40K ft., one sees huge, long, yellow mountain-like rows of stripped sulphur. Further north in Ft. Mc Murray, Alberta, there is the tar sands project where crude is extracted from sand via a coaker process. There massive mountains of pure white sand can be seen and this is the sand once the crude has been extracted.

Then in the contemporary Vietnam oil fields (Moi Hung), we find yet another manifestation. Bogus/dry labbed Soviet well logs and siesmo charts were used to sell drilling concessions to the unwary. Oh my, $ millions changed hands before the Hanoi and Saigon Oil Ministry Boss Hogs got caught with their greedy dick skinners in the western pocket and all that is still unresolved, except now the Boss Hogs live in the lap of luxury, eh. Power to the people, right. Well, not a dime of that money went to ?the people?, bet on that. SOSDD.

Scamp

[BLUEHAWK]

So, it's one of them "fishing by means of grenade" stories again' ain't it, Scamp...

[Seascamp]

Well Blue, I for one would never accuse our MSN of knowing diddly squat about the energy industry other than sensationalizing the negative and ignoring the technical challenges that have to be overcome to keep their cameras on and the tanks of their fancy-ass SUV?s and limousines filled up. A few years back, I did a project with Con Ed, Indian Point, NYC. There the daily fueling cost was at $24 million and the bulk of that fuel oil comes in from the mid east or elsewhere and that is just one of Con Eds many power stations. But when alternative energy sources are suggested you can bet the piggy bank the blue Staters are first in line blocking any such notions let alone adding any refining capacity. Ya know, we got our butts hung way out and if Galveston gets knocked out we are going to learn a very bitter lesson indeed. Nevada?s own ?Independent? Harry Reid is doing everything possible to totally cripple our nuke power generation industries and he will probably succeed. In the interim our growing global competitor, the EU, now has well over 120 nuke power plants operating successfully and are cutting their dependency on mid east petroleum and fossil fuels by leaps and bounds. In the ever paradoxical leftist jargon, Harry Reid has defined ?independent? as meaning nothing more than a pissy puppy for the ?Tammany Commonwealth? contemporary Boss Tweeds and anti-energy special interest groups.
And if nothing else, Rita and Katrina will show how totally screwed up and vulnerable we are and if we are smart we just may examine how we got ourselves in such a mess.

Scamp

[Seascamp]

And while I?m up to bat and on a roll, most of the industrial areas and especially the petroleum production areas of the former Soviet Union/current Russian Federation are so horribly screwed up and unsafe that the ?Super Fund? would be exhausted and not even make a dent in the environmental/industrial toxic catastrophe.
Alas, life was short and bitter in the alleged ?workers paradise? so maybe it?s appropriate to remove the hammer from the blood banner and get real for a change. But then, I almost fear to find out what has been going on in the agra side of things and in all probability the sickle is every bit as phony as the hammer. I?ll find out next spring and I?m not optimistic but will be open minded, maybe. Lay odds our MSN don?t want to know about all that either.

Scamp

[BLUEHAWK]

I figured you'd have a handle on this topic Scamp... so I hope others here will read this too.

I've learned a lot, and am sure there's a lot more to be told.

[BLUEHAWK]

Scamp, or anyone familiar enough...

What might be the most likely net result of a successful Al Qaeda (or other) attack upon the Saudi oil fields et al, at this or another time, under current conditions?