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Permalink Reply by Les Bamburg on August 22, 2009 at 10:18

NL, I don't think you really do. The feed gas has to be priced at about $0.50 per MMBtu at the wellhead for the technology to be economic.

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Permalink Reply by Pipeliner on August 22, 2009 at 11:23

You will note there are 40,000 workers on the job. They employ Third World Nationals that are paid from $150 per month up. An equipment operator seldom makes more than $450 a month and a skilled pipeline welder or pipefitter makes around $600 per month, working 7 days a week, 12 hours a day.

Even at non-union wages (stateside) can you imagine what the labor cost would be? With Union labor the cost would be astronomical

Foreign contractors' idea of a camp-job is to take a 40-foot steel shipping container and hang bunks in it. No electricity, water or air conditioning. In Indonesia on a job I was on, running across the equator, they put 32 welders in each container. The other workers and laborers were put in "bush camps" in the jungles, made of bamboo. Not really animal-proof (no fences around them or screens or bars on the windows, seldom any shot gun guards) as some of our workers got carried off by tigers pretty regularly.

Even in the main expat camp with the offices, mechanic shops, mess halls, etc that had 12-foot high barbwire fences, they had guard towers with shot-gun guards on each corner. Every now and then a big cat would come over the fence. When the political situation went to pot, we had soldiers with sub machine guns, inside, protecting us. In the middle of the night when you heard shotguns and machine guns hammering away, you did not stick your head out of your container.

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