Kuwait Oil to Invite Tenders for New Oil Booster Station in Western Kuwait

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--State-owned oil and gas operator Kuwait Oil Company Limited (KOC) (Ahmadi, Kuwait) will hold meetings with pre-qualified contractors on August 30 to discuss details of the development of a new oil booster station in western Kuwait.

The $800 million booster station project was originally intended to be tendered in January, but KOC withdrew the tender process for undefined reasons. A new bid deadline has been set for February 9. Last week, KOC delayed a bid deadline by a month for a booster station in North Kuwait.

The new project covers the construction of a grassroots booster station, known as BS-171, which will consist of three high- and low-pressure trains, each of which will have the capacity to process 125 million cubic feet per day of sour gas. Sour gas contains about 20,000 to 30,000 parts per million of hydrogen sulfide. The infrastructure project is one of Kuwait's largest currently planned.

Gas supply for the booster station will come from three existing gathering centers operated by KOC--numbers 17, 27 and 28--and a new gathering center, number 16. The contract for the construction of the booster station also covers the construction of pipelines from these gathering centers to the booster station.

Each of these gathering centers, which will supply gas to the booster station, contains two similar but separate gas-handling systems. A high-pressure system handles high-pressure gas from the first-stage separator, and a low-pressure system handles gas from the second-stage separator.

The gas in each gathering center system is pressure regulated and measured to check flow volume, temperature and pressure, and scrubbed to remove any liquid hydrocarbon residues before being sent to the booster station. Provisions are also made at each gathering center for diverting the gas flow to flaring, but this is only allowed during emergencies or at times when production exceeds capacity at the center.

Each booster station receives gas from the gathering centers and compresses it, separates the gas from the condensate, and removes any water remaining in both the gas and the condensate. This liquid dehydration is essential to prevent corrosion in the pipelines. The gas and condensate are then pumped separately through pipelines to the Mina Al-Ahmadi liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) plant, where they are processed to recover gasoline and LPG.

Any effluent gas from the LPG plant, known as lean gas, is used as fuel gas by industries in Kuwait, while any excess is either flared or used as fuel in the gathering centers. As the gas produced in West Kuwait is sour gas, it is transmitted to an acid gas removal plant for sweetening before it is transmitted to the LPG plant at Mina Al-Ahmadi.

Kuwait Oil Company was established in 1934 by the then-named Anglo-Persian Oil Company, now BP plc (NYSE:BP) (London, United Kingdom), and Gulf Oil, later merged with Chevron Corporation (NYSE:CVX). In 1975, the Kuwait government assumed 100% control of KOC, and the company was devastated by the Iraq invasion of the country in 1990. However, it is now one of the world's largest oil companies and a major contributor to Kuwait's economy.

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