Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Bernell McGehee on March 15, 2014 at 15:46

Here is what Goodrich states on the last slide from their current management presentation:

"Agreement in place to strip the liquids from the rich natural gas (1400-1500Btu, 80-100 bbl/mmcf NGL yield)."

Here is the link:

http://www.goodrichpetroleum.com/presentations/MgmtTMS.pdf

Permalink Reply by Rock Man on March 15, 2014 at 18:34

Could the hydrocarbons being trucked out be NGL's that are stripped from the raw gas stream using the JT unit or some sort refrigeration unit?

Permalink Reply by Joe Aldridge on March 16, 2014 at 0:31

Mark P, Bernell and Skip,

Evidentially they are trucking to NG out by truck. They are installing a propane collection facility across from the Marathon Tank farm South of St. Francisiville. So it looks like the plan is to truck the NG Liquids out as Propane.. I guess our suspicions from the beginning have been correct. The NG associated with the TMS is Propane not Methane.

Permalink Reply by Skip Peel - Mineral Consultant on March 16, 2014 at 3:20

I suspect that the NGLs are being stripped at the well site and the natural gas is being flared.  The NGLs would then be trucked to a NGL pipeline for transport or to a "fractionator" where the liquids would be separated into the commercial components.  Those are ethane, propane, butane, isobutane, pentane and pentane plus.  At this point there is not enough methane in the stream to be worth  the cost to compress for transport by truck.  As long as the state allows flaring the gas will simply be burned off.

Permalink Reply by Steve on March 16, 2014 at 3:27

I believe the NGLs are counted with the oil production so we have seen the flow rates recited as BOE per day instead of BBLs per day. Is this correct?

Permalink Reply by Bernell McGehee on March 16, 2014 at 8:37

Just two questions (one simple, one not) and I'll leave you alone, Jim.

What or who is td,p.

Second, you originally wrote,

"that's a bullet tank in the photo above. a j-t unit operates under the principle of when a gas is rapidly allowed to expand (by lowering its pressure, the gas becomes cooled, when cooled some or all c3+ liquifiables drop out.

a j-t unit will knock out c3+ fractions. it won't knock out c2, ethane. to strip out ethane, you need a full size gas plant."

So, my second general question is to put this into laymen's terms that whole section, but, specifically...

a. "that's a bullet tank in the photo above.  a j-t unit operates..."  Please explain the relationship between "bullet tank" and "j-t unit."  In my simple mind you made an observation and then began to talk about something else.

and

b. I don't understand the "c" references, but I can read about that, I suppose.  My question here is this...Are you suggesting that if there is any ethane in the TMS gas that they are not able to extract it with what you saw in the picture?

Permalink Reply by Steve on March 16, 2014 at 3:29

Refrigeration units are used I believe.

Permalink Reply by jim weyland on March 16, 2014 at 4:37

that's a bullet tank in the photo above. a j-t unit operates under the principle of when a gas is rapidly allowed to expand (by lowering its pressure, the gas becomes cooled, when cooled some or all c3+ liquifiables drop out.

a j-t unit will knock out c3+ fractions. it won't knock out c2, ethane. to strip out ethane, you need a full size gas plant.

there are two types of these. the old school gas plant is a lean-oil plant. note: think, the carthage plant. it works by passing the rich gas through a liquid that the liquifiables would rather be 'with' as compared to the gas. the lean oil is warmed up and the liquifiables flash out. this is a continuous, cycled process.

the second type of plant, a 'new wave' gas plant, is a turbo-expansion plant. think of it as a j-t unit on steroids and then exposed to radiation a la godzilla.

these plants can extract everything including the squeal. they're pretty much what's built today, but they cost more to build.

Permalink Reply by Bernell McGehee on March 16, 2014 at 6:00

Jim,

I'm sure you know what you are talking about, but you lost me in the first two sentences.

Can you possibly dumb it down a little?  I'd love to know what you are saying in laymen's terms.

I found this brief article that helped be understand some of the basics.

If you can build from this low level, I would appreciate it.

http://www.usenergydevcorp.com/media_downloads/Natural%20Gas%20Dry%...

Permalink Reply by Two Dogs, Pirate on March 16, 2014 at 6:55

Burnell think of it as an air conditioner or refrigerator, the compressor inside the unit changes the pressure on the gas causing it to cool or heat as with a heat pump. 

Permalink Reply by jim weyland on March 16, 2014 at 8:00

bernell,

td,p has a good explanation of how a j-t unit and turbo-expansion type plants work. they each take advantage of the fact that if you rapidly expand a gas its temperature drops. 

i like to think of how a spray can gets cold when you use it. so, what happens when you cool the stream of natural gas is that as you cool it down the hydrocarbon molecules "heavier" than methane begin to fall out of the stream of gas.

it may be helpful to think about the case of where you took the hottest cup of coffee ever and stirred into it as much sugar as you could possibly get to dissolve in it, i mean really overdoing it with the sugar.

so, what happens as that coffee begins to cool down? well, we know, as it cools down some of that dissolved sugar begins to fall out of the coffee. that's essentially what happens when you cool the gas stream, the heavier molecules will fall out.

the gas that comes out the wellhead contains mostly methane, that is one carbon atom w/4 hydrogen molecules attached to it. that stream of well head gas also usually contains amounts of hydrocarbon gases "heavier" than methane. it's those heavier molecules that are removed via processing.

examples of those "heavier" molecule are ethane which is a molecule with 2 carbon atoms connected to each other with 6 hydrogen atoms atoms connected to the two carbon atoms. propane is next "heavier" molecule it has 3 carbons strung together along with 8 hydrogen atoms connected to them.

you'll commonly see molecules as heavy as natural gasoline, 5 carbons with hydrogen atoms connected to them in well head gas. so, when you cool the gas, these molecules heavier than methane, when the gas is cooled, begin to drop out of the gas stream in order of the heaviest to the lightest.

a j-t unit takes advantage of the high pressure of the wellhead gas and it runs the gas through a small orifice on the other side of which is a larger diameter vessel. when the gas gets through the orifice, just like a spray can nozzle it expands and the heavys fall out. a turbo-expansion type processing plant takes advantage of the same process, it just drop the pressure way more than a j-t. this more extreme pressure drop causes more of the heavier molecules to fall out. those separated heavies are saved because they're usually more valuable than methane

the other type of processing plant , a lean-oil plant takes advantage of the fact that when the well head gas stream with its heavier molecules passes through a special liquid in which those heavier molecules are "happier" being in than being in the gas stream. those heavies dissolve in the lean oil. that oil now containing the gas's heavys is heated up and the heavys "boil" off and are saved.

to your original question: imo, i have often seen some mis-use of the word "wet" when, imo, the word "rich" is more correctly used.

note: all wellhead gas is "wet", that is wet with water. the first thing you do with wellhead gas is to "dehydrate" the gas by taking the water out. when you've got the water vapor out, you now have "dry" gas. i like to think of gas that's had it's "richness"  knocked out via one of the methods described above as lean gas, but i'm not sure everyone would agree with my usage of "lean".

in any event, when you get the water out and sufficient heavier hydrocarbon molecules out of the gas stream, (assuming the gas doesn't also have contaminants like hydrogen sulfide which would need to be removed, its poisonous), you'd end up with "pipeline quality" gas. and, it is this is what is commonly known by the layman as natural gas.

i hope i've been helpful. but the gas business just has a whole bunch of very confusing terms. and, sometimes folks don't always use them in a correct context.

jim

Permalink Reply by Joe Aldridge on March 16, 2014 at 8:02

Bernell, 

TD is correct. What they do is cool the gas stream down until it liquefies. Then it can be trucked out as a liquid. The Plant that is under construction South of St. Francisville I think is to process that raw NGL and separate it into the various components for sale.

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