Gas Sweetening Unit and Pipeline – Boundary Lake, Alberta

Issue

The customer’s existing 13 km associated sour gas export pipeline experienced a corrosion failure. The estimated costs to repair it were approximately $1.3 million and the high value oil production was immediately shut-in until the pipeline was repaired and gas production could resume.

Solution

In order to provide a solution that was both fast and innovative, Reef installed a non-regenerative gas sweetening system and built a 1 km steel pipeline to a 3rd party sweet gas compressor station, which allowed our client to resume their oil and gas sales in a portion of the pipeline repair time estimated. As a result, the client received huge capital cost savings (approximately $900,000) in addition to 3 months of production gains due to the short period of time in which the issue was fixed.

Reef Advantage

Instead of going with a new unit, Reef sourced a surplus 2008 sour gas treatment system that had never been put into service, which translated into significant savings for the client. We modified the system to include an H2S meter and required controls. To save the client further costs, the sweetening unit was installed on an existing larger foundation. Then Reef designed and constructed the steel pipeline to the compressor station. Finally, we modified the site electrical and instrumentation to integrate the sweetening unit, metering and call out, including creation of an overall facility cause and effect key. The overall expedited schedule greatly reduced the the losses associated with stopping production for an extended period of time.