Oil & Gas Journal's 2015 Worldwide Gas Processing Report, which starts on p. 58, is my 31st effort to update OGJ readers. It's also my last.
This one, as have the preceding 30, relies on a survey of the world's gas plant operators conducted by OGJ's diligent survey editors. It also depends on publicly available operator data on capacities, production, expansions, and closings.
Those 31 years, however, represent barely a third of the time OGJ has been collecting gas processing and light liquid production information. As nearly as my search of archives has uncovered, OGJ began reporting on NGLs produced from field processing in the early 1920s. Indeed, throughout those early years, that's how the data were characterized and reported: by liquid production from processing at or near production points for the (then) nearly useless hydrocarbon, methane.
Those 20th century annual reports, however, and the data and activities that comprised them reflect industry growth that, by the 21st century, had become critical to the historic resurgence in US hydrocarbon production.
History; numbers
A reliable history of US gas processing is Ron Cannon's The Gas Processing Industry (Tulsa: Gas Processors Association, 1993). Written to coincide with GPA's 75th anniversary, the book also segments the stages of growth from 1900 to the late 1980s. Diving into dusty, moldy OGJ archives reveals-surely to no one's surprise-that OGJ was early in reporting the industry's inception and growth.
Reviewing the first 40 years of industry development, Cannon summarizes the evolution of processes to separate hydrocarbon liquids from vapor. Main processes were compression (Peterson patent, 1912) and absorbing oil (Seybolt patent, 1911), the latter specifically for recovering naphtha. Oil absorption quickly became the workhorse for industry well into the 1930s, joined by charcoal adsorption and "weathering," or stabilization.
Through those early years, OGJ kept track of industry developments, especially rising gas-liquids production. In those days, plants were called "natural gasoline" plants and were denominated by their production capacity in gallons per day.
In May 1924, OGJ data show 1,012 such plants operating with combined capacities of nearly 3.4 million gpd. By 1930, the number of natural gasoline plants had risen to 1,071 with production capacity of more than 9.5 million gpd.
The 1930s set a trend industry would follow to this day of building fewer but larger plants. By 1933, US capacity had risen to more than 10 million gpd. By 1942, with the nation ramping up for war, only 606 plants were in operation, but they could produce nearly 11.4 million gpd.
Cannon says that during the war years and up to 1960, the gas processing industry established itself as integral to the nation's fuels effort, whether for war or for peace. He also notes the emergence of an entirely new US LPG industry and infrastructure. In fact, OGJ's survey for 1951 for the first time broke out data for LPG production: 178 of 477 plants producing 3.6 million gpd of LPG within an overall gasoline plant production of nearly 23 million gpd.
By 1955, Cannon says, production of LPG had surpassed that of natural gasoline. Technologies that supported that trend included refrigerated absorption, high-pressure absorption, and cryogenic extraction.
For 1953 data and every year since, OGJ began classifying plants by inlet vapor capacity (MMcfd): 455 US plants were operating at a combined processing capacity of 20.5 bcfd. For 1961, OGJ data show 715 gas plants operating with a total capacity of 44.4 bcfd. In addition, for 1971, OGJ had begun reporting on Canadian gas processing: 144 plants with nearly 13 bcfd of capacity.
Final words
Earlier, I mentioned this is my last Gas Processing Report: I will retire on July 1.
Covering midstream has been an unexpected pleasure. Unexpected, because in 1985 I knew so little about it. Unexpected, because I quickly became fascinated by its intuitive, conceptually simple, yet sophisticated technologies. But especially unexpected, because of the people.
Close work with the Houston Chapter of GPA as well as the national organization has introduced me to serious, intelligent, conscientious men and women, who value not only their jobs but also their responsibilities as stewards of the environment in which they operate.
I shall miss them.