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Offshore oil reserves exploitation is often hampered by the lack of an available environmentally and economically effective solution to associated gas management. Through flare bans and resistance to/ cost of gas re-injection back into the reservoir, projects are often delayed or abandoned even though the volume of gas can be very small compared to the volume of liquids to be released. CNG and LNG can offer solutions in individual cases but can be hugely capital intensive and are not a general solution to the problem.
Gas to liquids (GTL) mini systems hold much greater potential to provide an industry wide solution. Until recently conventional GTL land technology was not sufficiently small scale, portable, economic and efficient to work in a marine environment.
Gas2 processes will be able to work at low pressures (4bar for natural gas to Syngas stepping up to 20bar for FT liquid unit) and volumes as low as 1mmscf gas/day (100bpd liquid fuel output) through to 50mmscf/day (5000 bpd) based on its modular scalable design. The associated gas typically comes out of solution in separators stepping down in pressure and can be taken off at several different stages depending on the specific circumstances. The “solid state” design of the porous membrane technology is well suited to offshore use.
Gas2 technology can also be scaled up to take larger volumes of gas in oil/gas reserves where monetising the gas asset as well as the oil is central to the reservoir exploitation business case.
It is estimated* that around 150 billion cubic metres of gas is flared or vented every year across the global oil and gas sector, which is equivalent to 18% of US natural gas consumption, or 32% of the European Union gas consumption.
*The Global Gas Flaring Reduction Partnership