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CompactGTL : A TAILORED AND

REVOLUTIONARY SOLUTION TO
ASSOCIATED GAS PROBLEMS IN
OILFIELD DEVELOPMENT

Peter Riches

GTLtec Conference - Qatar


22nd January 2007
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Expanding the GTL market space

Key strategic issues:

stranded or associated gas

technology or opportunity driven

big or small plant

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Stranded or associated gas opportunity

Stranded gas Associated gas

• ~3,000 TCF gas • >1,000 TCF as technical reserves

• Giant gas fields (>2TCF) • 100’s Billions barrels of oil with


associated gas

• Economics driven by cost of gas • Economics driven by enabling oilfield


and value of products development, not gas or product prices
• Products marketed individually • Syncrude blended with produced oil for
shipment

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Current associated gas options

• In deepwater or remote locations the current potential


solutions are:
• Pipelines (needs a market access onshore)
• Re-injection
• Flaring (not an option for new fields)

• Issues
• Costs
• Undeveloped oil reserves
• Constraints on production/reservoir management
• International pressure to stop flaring
• National governments’ concern over disposition and use of national
resource

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The associated gas problem

• Flaring and re-injection of >15 TCF per


year
• 100’s billions of barrels of oil
• Several trends in E&P will increase the
problem over the next 10 years

• New fields increasingly in remote


locations
• Increasing new deepwater
developments
• Declining field sizes in offshore,
deepwater prolific basins.
• Increasing environmental pressure to
reduce flaring

• HUGE OPPORTUNITY !
Deepwater E & P Gas flaring

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GTL market drivers

Conventional Technology: Opportunity:

• Bigger is better - economies of • Economics not scale dependent


scale
• Conversion efficiency • Elimination of gas flaring or re-injection
• Designed for onshore applications • Onshore and offshore applications
• Constant gas throughput • Flat and declining throughputs

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Associated gas GTL market

Requirements

• Scalable capacities

• Flexible throughputs

• Suitable for offshore operations

CompactGTL
Modular reactor construction

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CompactGTL

$30 million invested in development to date

Competitive advantage CompactGTL’s core process takes place


in two closely coupled stages using
• Modular reactor structure
patented, compact, process-intensified
• Designed for offshore application reactors:
• no oxygen plant
• minimal waste water streams
Technical performance
• Energy and carbon conversion cf. industry norms
• Capital & operating costs cf. industry norms
Intellectual property
• 44 patent family awards and applications

The CompactGTL Process

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GTL plant scale

Big - Conventional CompactGTL

• Giant plants • Oil fields with associated gas 100 -300BCF


• Plants cost $ billions • Plant costs $35 - $175 million
• Converts gas to refined products • Converts gas to syncrude for shipment

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CompactGTL’s market focus

• Oil fields producing 10 – 50,000 mmscf/day


• Generating 1,000 – 5,000 bpd of syncrude
• Equivalent to adding up to 10% of oil produced from field
• Oil fields with reserves up to 250 MMBO & gas reserves < 300 BCFG
• New oil fields where re-injection or pipeline options are not viable for
technical or commercial reasons, e.g.,
• low volume of associated gas
• distance to market or shore
• lack of onshore solution e.g. LNG, methanol
• reservoir prevents re-injection

• New oil fields where re-injection is the only option produces lower total
NPV for the oil field because, e.g.,
• significant capital cost
• increased complexity of reservoir management
• potential damage to the reservoir (early gas break through)
• limits on oil production rates

• Existing oil fields where gas flaring is being phased out or heavily taxed

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CompactGTL technology development

New, state of the art laboratory near Oxford

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CompactGTL technology application

• PETROBRAS
10-20 barrel per day plant for
testing onshore and offshore Brazil.
On-stream 2008

Feasibility studies for offshore GTL Small FPSO


plants using our process Space envelope for 1000 bpd COMPACTGTL Plant
20m x 30m x 23m Weight 1633 te

• Industrial gas company


Development and licensing of small
scale, on-site hydrogen generation
plant

18,000 bpd floating GTL

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CompactGTL – the difference

Conventional GTL CompactGTL


• Enables the economic exploitation of • Enables the economic production of oil by
large gas fields solving the associated gas problem in remote
a or deepwater locations
• Giant “Stranded” gas fields (>2TCF) • Oil fields with associated gas 100 - 300 BCF
• Plant cost of $ billions • Plant cost of $35 million – $175 million
• Bigger is better – economies of scale • Process economics are not scale dependent
• Designed for onshore applications • Designed for offshore & onshore application
• Converts gas to refined products • Converts gas to synthetic crude for shipment
• Economics dependent on gas and • Economics driven by enhancement of total
GTL product prices oil field NPV

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Conclusion

• The next GTL revolution will be in smaller scale


plants with flexible throughputs to solve the
associated gas problem in oilfield development
• The associated gas problem requires non-
conventional GTL technology
• CompactGTL has the technology to turn the
associated gas problem into an opportunity

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