FreeatFirst23 Aug 2018 14:15
Your round and I'll tell you all about it lol.
Where I worked, wet gas was commonly understood to be water saturated gas, along with free water production. Water saturated wet gas can cause big problems in the production process, because at certain temperatures and pressures, it forms methane hydrate. This is an "ice" like substance, can form at temps well above 0'c, and gives rise to blockages in any process plant, thus causing production upsets or even shut downs.
However, I believe when Zaza talks of wet gas, he is saying it is gas saturated with heavy hydrocarbons and natural gas condensates. Natural gas condensate is a colourless liquid, looks like water, but is highly flammable and a valuable commodity. But, if you're in the business of natural gas production, you'd rather just produce the gas and not have to bother with the liquids side of things. It requires a fair bit of processing to get it to a position where it is suitable for transportation by rail, road or ship.
You ask a very good question and one that has been nagging at me for some time, but I had chosen not to speculate and add more questions to the pot. So exactly how are we dealing with it? And this applies to T45 and Dino as well as T39. I fear a contributor to the delay in news is our inability to handle 600 bbls plus a day from producing wells for a number of reasons i.e. suitable plant, personnel, transport, storage etc. I may be well wide of the mark here and it may not be a problem at all, but I fear slow downs in production rates or even stoppages whilst we deal with the oil produced to date.
With regards to T39, I don't know if hydrocarbon condensate readily mixes with crude oil or not. The SG of gas condensate is typically about 600kg/m3. Our oil is 45' API which is very light, but haven't worked out the SG. If the condensate isn't miscible with the crude oil, I'm not sure we've got the equipment to deal with it? Perhaps the oil and condensate can all be tankered away as a mix? I don't know, but whatever is transported off site has to be safe. Look up Reid vapour pressure for an explanation.