Zero flared gas in Egypt

Prepared by:

Tarek El Barkatawy,

Chairman  & MD Tanmia Petroleum

Mahmoud Fawzy,

Production General Manager

Abstract:

Zero Flared Gas in Egypt is a concept aims to eliminate flaring the associated gas in the oil fields.

The flared Gas in Egypt is estimated at about 110 MMSCF/D (which is a total waste) distributed as follows: 58 MMSCF/D in the Western desert, 28 MMSCF/D in the Eastern desert,  14 MMSCF/D in the Gulf of Suez and 8 MMSCF/D in the Mediterranean Sea. Most of Which are scattered in the form of 0.5 to 3 MMSCF/D per location which does not make it financially viable to build a Gas plant to exploit this gas.

• The flared gas causes a great impact to the environment due to the carbon emission resulted from the flare. One MMSCF/D (Typically generators 3,000 – 4,000 Tons of VOC (Volatile organic Compounds) that causes 10 – 12,000 Tons of  Co₂
• The gas flared in most of the fields is an associated gas that was produced with the oil and was separated through a gas/ oil separation plant or simple early production facility.
• The associated gas are sometimes, referred to as wet gas due to the fact that some of its component are of a liquid nature that is valuable as a separate product and is profitable to remove from the natural gas.
• However, most of the flared gas volume does not justify building a gas plant to exploit it nor the valuable liquid components.
• Tanmia Petroleum Company being a field development company fully owned by the Government of Egypt took the lead to study and provide a comprehensive solution to this environment and financial loss problem.
• Tanmia has proposed a field proven mobile fractionation unit that extracts the NGL (Natural Gas Liquid) that is the liquid phase of the mixture and contains propane (C3), Butane (C4), Pentane (C5)…… etc.
• Zero Flared Gas in Egypt