Rasgas Flare Minimization Efforts

The experience in using LDAR for monitoring fugitive emissions of Volatile Organic Compounds with special reference to RasGas’ experience 1

RasGas Flare Minimization Efforts

AbdulRahman Alahmad a, Julius Bacania,Kaushik Deb a

a RasGas Company Ltd., Ras Laffan Industrial City, Qatar

(387 words)

Abstract

The major contributors of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissionsfrom integrated liquefied natural gas (LNG) operations include annual gas flaring from normal operation, unplanned outages, and planned shutdowns. Typically, flaring of associated and non-associated gasesresults in the equivalent of 5 percent of the world’s annual natural gas production and emits roughly 400 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year, equal to the emissions from 77 million automobiles. This problem is compounded by the fact that no single solution exists at this time.

RasGas, as one of the premier energy companies in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), has developed an initiative toreduce its GHG footprintfrom flaring through the implementation of a comprehensive Flare Minimization Plan (FMP).In 2012, RasGas launched a fresh five-year FMP covering its Ras Laffan facilities (both on-site and off-plot), which was a continuation oftheinaugural2006-2011 FMP. The new plan, which isexpected to be completed by 2016, aims to reduce flaring emissions from a baseline of 1.26 per cent (volume of flared gas per unit of gas intake) in 2011 to 0.43 per cent in 2016. RasGas’ approach is to continue employing industry best practices and innovative efforts which include but are not limited to improving facility designs, enhancing operating procedures, and using waste gas for power generation. The first year of the new plan successfully reduced the amount of gas flared by 14 per cent in comparison to 2011. This was attributable to having fewer unplanned incidents as a result of reliability improvements in the LNG trains, fuel gas balancing throughproduction trains interconnection, and flare gas controllability improvement. Excellentprogress was also achieved on the passing valve monitoring project that helped in identifying and eventually repairing unknown sources of continuous flaring. This initiative was extended to cover all trains in 2012 and the first round of monitoring has been recently completed. RasGas believes that most of the benefits from these flare reduction efforts will be realized in future years.

This paper describes RasGas’ efforts on flare minimization from concept selection to execution stage including the challenges and successes achieved so far.Reducing flared gas volumes continuesto be a challengingtask, one that necessitatesa collaborativeeffort by policymakers and industries to put in place the necessary infrastructure and market designs to enable these solutions.