Part III: Flare Reduction Project Family - IPIECA

ATTACHMENT 1
FLARE REDUCTION PROJECT CASE STUDY #2: GAS
RECOVERY FOR RE-INJECTION AND UTILIZATION FOR
POWER GENERATION
Project Definition
Description of the Project Activity 21
This project example recovers associated gas that would otherwise be flared, re-injects a portion
of the gas, and uses the majority of the gas to provide fuel for a new power plant. In this
example, an existing oil and gas processing plant (OGPP) receives oil from local oil fields and
separates associated gas from the oil. A small portion of gas produced at the OGPP is exported
to a LNG plant to provide supplemental fuel. Another small fraction of the produced gas is used
for on-site power and processing needs at the OGPP (oil/gas separation, oil heaters, glycol
dehydration and glycol regeneration, pumping, compression etc.). The remaining large portion
of the gas produced at the OGPP currently is flared.
Flaring a large portion of the gas results in the release of CO 2 emissions and uncombusted CH 4
to the atmosphere. After evaluating alternative approaches, the project proponent decided to reinject
a portion of the associated gas for storage in the oil production fields, and also to build an
independent power plant (IPP) that will use the major portion of the currently flared gas as fuel,
as well as a new pipeline to deliver this gas to the power plant. Significant GHG emissions will
thus be eliminated by recovering and utilizing the volumes of gas that are currently flared.
This example project is described in more detail below.
Before the project:
The oil from production wells in five local oil fields is transported to the OGPP for separation of
the oil and wet gas. The annual volume of wet gas produced from the oil-gas separation system
is about 2.7×10 9 standard cubic meters (scm; 9.53×10 10 scf/yr). Only a small fraction of the
associated gas produced at the OGPP, 1.2×10 8 scm/year (4.24×10 9 scf/year), is used for on-site
power and processing needs. In addition, an existing pipeline exports 2.07×10 8 scm/year
(7.31×10 9 scf/year) of high-pressure associated gas to an off-site LNG plant to provide
supplemental fuel. The remaining gas production, 2.3×10 9 scm/year (8.12×10 10 scf/yr) from the
OGPP, is sent to the flare system.
21 This case study is derived from the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) Project Design Document (PDD) and
baseline methodology associated with the “Recovery of associated gas that would otherwise be flared at Kwale oilgas
processing plant” project in Nigeria. In this project example, the schematic diagram of the project, the equations
to quantify the baseline and project emissions, the gas volume, and emission factors are modified from the CDM-
PDD to conform to the approaches in Section 2 of the General Project Guidelines (IPIECA and API, 2007).
October 2009 30