Exxon again at full speed with replaced gas compressor

Apr 09, 2021 News

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Kaieteur News – Operator of the Stabroek Block, ExxonMobil Guyana, says it has completed the reinstallation of the repaired and upgraded components of the flash gas compression system on-board the Liza Destiny, Floating, Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessel and is currently involved in “monitoring the performance of the machine closely in (a) normal, steady-state operation.”
This, according to the US oil major, in an update yesterday, in which it also noted that the monitoring of the resumed operations at the FPSO represents the third and final phase of its testing programme, following the installation of the repaired compressor.
The operator said that pilot level flaring was attained during the testing and a significant volume of process and mechanical data was collected.
It was noted too that over the last few days, the team successfully completed the first two phases, which were intended to verify the effectiveness of the modifications to the equipment and control system logic.
The resumption of operations for monitoring takes place this week after removal of temporary instrumentation, according to the oil major. The company has since committed to providing an additional update on the operations, early next week.
The company at the end of last month had reported that its team of experts was making final preparations for the start-up of the flash gas compressor this week aboard the Liza Destiny.
Addressing the delays in the reinstallation of the equipment in order to restore normal operations within the prescribed flaring limits, ExxonMobil Guyana had informed this publication that the team offshore had been “carefully and methodically reassembling the various components of the gas compression system, and are now running key instrumentation tests for a successful start-up.”
The company added that throughout that period, ExxonMobil “has sought to strike a balance between safely maintaining production, while minimising flaring.”
The company further added, “We have kept relevant government agencies and other stakeholders informed about the progress of the repairs and reinstallation.”
Kaieteur News had calculated that at 16 million cubic feet per day, the company had already flared excess of 176 million cubic feet of natural gas eleven days after announcing that it would be flaring beyond pilot levels in January and that number continued to increase during that period.
The defective gas compressor which led to the increased flaring and releasing of pollutants into the atmosphere had repaired the equipment with its manufacturer, MAN Turbo, in Germany. This followed a detailed inspection by the technical experts at the MAN Energy Solutions workshop, ExxonMobil said in an operational update.
Chief Operations Officer at Hess Corporation—ExxonMobil’s partner in the Stabroek Block—Gregory Hill during a January 27 earnings call for the fourth quarter of 2020, had said that ExxonMobil would be evaluating options to increase nameplate capacity of the Liza Destiny operation, but he had said that those options would be pursued in the third quarter of 2021, not the first.
The press only found out during a February 8 press conference, that ExxonMobil had already been doing higher production capacity tests and that it had been producing as high as 130,000 barrels per day in January.
ExxonMobil officials said that the Liza Destiny is able to produce as many as 158,000 barrels of oil per day.
The company had last December reported that it had successfully commissioned the gas injection system, which was fixed months after malfunctioning.
That state of affairs had resulted in over one billion cubic feet of gas being flared along with the release of toxic chemicals.
Exxon was only meant to briefly flare gas at project start-up in late December 2019 to test and fully commission the gas compression and injection systems at the site.
However, the company would end up flaring gas way longer than expected, for more than a year in fact.
According to an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) brief, ExxonMobil had said that the third stage-flash gas compressor and suction silencer had been sent for repairs in Germany and were returned to the Liza Destiny FPSO in late October, 2020.
The EPA had said that same was being reinstalled and was expected to restart functioning in mid-November.
Exxon, according to the November update, had expected the equipment to take one to two weeks of testing to confirm that the repairs and modifications worked.
Notably, at the end of October, the company had flared more than 16 million cubic feet of natural gas, thereby making Guyana one of the top five countries in the world for volume flared per year, per capita.

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