Recovery of flare gas from technical, economic and environmental perspectives: El Gamil gas field case study, Egypt

Flaring is a process in which gaseous hydrocarbons are burned to prevent uncontrolled releases into the surrounding atmosphere and to relieve dangerous equipment overpressure conditions or any other operational upsets. The most recent data reported by the world bank’s global gas flaring reduction partnership (GGFR) indicate that 150×109 cubic meters (m3) [5.3×1012 cubic feet (ft3)] of natural gas are flared annually, and this quantity results in 400 million tons of carbon dioxide,CO2 emissions. This calls for encouraging the opportunities to eliminate continuous flaring of the associated and dissolved gases at production sites to improve the energy efficiency and contribute to the climate change mitigation and hence achieve the sustainable development in oil and gas industry. The paper introduces a field study at El-Gamil gas plant, a gas processing plant located at Portsaid city on the northern east coast of Egypt. The plant collects the gas and condensate production from offshore wells in the Mediterranean Sea to be processed at onshore in low temperature separation units ‘LTS’ and condensate treatment units to meet sales specs. In the 2nd quarter of 2004, a new project consists of 4 multi-stage compressors started to recover excess-off gas coming from the condensate treatment units and compresses it to the pressure of raw gas from wells to be processed prior to sale. This project is evaluated from technical, economical and environmental perspectives to provide a broad image for any waste gas recovery project. Meanwhile; improving the suitability in O & G sector and increasing available supplies.