Nestoil Limited, one of the leading indigenous oil and gas company in Nigeria, is tackling oil theft in the country to the barest minimum with the adoption of an alternative evacuation system.
The alternative evacuation system is a process where the regular downtimes caused by technical issues to pipelines carrying crude oil, and vandalism done on the pipelines across specific routes will be negated through another method of evacuating the oil by barges.
Ifeanyi Ezuka, chief technical officer, Neconde Energy limited, a subsidiary of Nestoil said the innovation is the latest testament to Nestoil’s growing reputation as an innovative company that constantly seeks proprietary ways of working in difficult terrains and also borne out of necessity due to the downtime recorded on Forcados terminal when moving their products there.
Elucidating the importance of the innovation to the country’s oil industry, Ezuka said historically, in the last 45 years, oil producing companies have used the 200 km long TFP in transporting crude oil to the Forcados Oil Terminal (FOT), however, frequent shutdowns due to vandalism and oil theft, as well as technical challenges, means a number of producers are unable to meet export targets.
“It is either some of the crude oil gets stolen in the course of its journey through the flow lines or the TFP is completely shut down due to technical challenges. The TFP has an average downtime of 25 percent and as of March 2016, the TFP had a downtime of 49 percent which ultimately results in revenue losses.
“The NPDC/Neconde JV like many others gets impacted by these challenges in the course of operating its OML 42 fields and the big challenge was how to develop a system that can effectively separate produced crude oil from water and gas, then deliver dry crude (export grade) to the point of sale without needing to use the TFP and the FOT”.
This was exactly what Nestoil Group painstakingly achieved via the alternative evacuation system.
Breaking it down, he said in the modified system and facilities designed and built by Nestoil Group of Companies and its affiliates, the liquid that comes out from the wellhead has four constituents – oil, water, gas and sediments known as wet crude, adding that the wet crude needs to be processed to get export grade crude oil and in the first step, the processing wet crude oil is fed into a 3-phase separator where sediment, oil, water, and gas are separated with the crude further fed into an electrostatic heater treater where it is further treated to remove gas and water to meet export requirements (dry crude).
“The ready-for-export dry crude is then pumped to the loading platform where it is stored in a dump barge/Vessel. Shuttle vessels come to load the crude and transport to the FSO Ugo Ocha offshore, where buyer’s vessels load the crude. This process bypasses crude handling charges and potential theft through the TFP”, he added.
On how they were able to face the challenge of developing the system, he said it was a combination of technology, logistics, and resilience.
“We looked at the fundamentals of what is required to be able to carry this out rather than putting it on a pipe, then we put it on a barge and send it out. So from the technical side, what are the type of barges we need? What is the draft of the river? How deep is the river from there to where we want to go? What are the terminals around those that are the closest? So how far is where we are to the closest terminal? So all of those technical assessments and analysis we have to do right, so that’s the first technical side.”
Josephine Okojie
