Offshore Gas Pipeline Linepack to Improve

the Flexibility of System Facilities

Quang Khanh Do1(&), Cong Vinh Luan Dinh1, Truc Doan1,

Thi Mai Huong Tran1, and Huu Nhan Nguyen2
1
Faculty of Geology and Petroleum Engineering, Back Khoa University (BKU),
Vietnam National University, HoChiMinh City, Vietnam
dqkhanh@hcmut.edu.vn
2
PetroVietnam Domestic Exploration Production Operating Company Limited
(PVEP POC), HoChiMinh City, Vietnam

Abstract. The primary function of natural gas pipeline is to transport gas from
the supply source (e.g. offshore processing facilities) to the end users such as
gas-fired power plant or fertilizer plant. For a long-distance pipeline, there is
also a secondary function, a short-term gas storage, called linepack, storing a
certain amount of extra gas into the pipeline (packing the pipeline). This extra
gas volume will be extracted (unpacking) during high demand or shortfall in
supply source. This property is due to the compressibility of the gas. Linepack
gives an operational flexibility for both gas supply and demand. The gas supply
will have a time windows to overcome minor unwanted operational incidents
without affecting the demand. In the other hand, the demand also has a flexibility
for fluctuating between peak and off-peak periods.
A case study will be used to develop a linepack flexibility chart which will be
used as pipeline operating maps to monitor the linepack flexibility of the
pipeline. This case study can be used as a template for specific cases. The longer
the pipeline, the more linepack flexibility. The natural gas supply source can
estimate the time window to deal with minor operating incidents without
affecting the gas demand and the gas demand can be fluctuated between peak
and off-peak periods.
The novelty of this paper is to provide a quick method to work out the
linepack flexibility from which the upstream facility operator can be aware the
available time window to recover their facilities without affecting the gas supply
at pipeline downstream.

Keywords: Linepack
Pipeline
Natural gas
Offshore
Flexibility

1 Introduction

Natural gas after processing from offshore facility will normally be exported to shore
by a pipeline. The sales gas contract has a very strict term of Gas Sales Purchase
Agreement (GSPA) on gas delivery in which the gas flowrate must be met average
Daily Contract Quantity (DCQ) at an agreed flowrate otherwise a contract penalty will
be applied. The upstream operators try many ways to avoid downtime that affects to the
gas delivery such as increasing the equipment reliability and redundancy. However,

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019

M. F. Randolph et al. (Eds.): VSOE 2018, LNCE 18, pp. 478–484, 2019.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2306-5_67
 Offshore Gas Pipeline Linepack to Improve the Flexibility 479

there are still risks of minor downtime due to many unknown reasons: process upset,
fault failures/alarms and especially human errors. The minor downtime also affects to
the gas supply at pipeline downstream.
Taking the advantage of gas compressibility, the gas pipeline can be used as a
buffer to store extra gas volume, called linepack. This extra gas volume can buy time
for upstream operators to recover their facility. Linepack can be efficiently applied for a
long-distance pipeline (hundreds kilometer long) and the upstream facility must have
extra capacity to pack the line.
This paper focuses on applying linepack to increase the reliability of upstream
facility (gas supply) by using the extra gas volume storing in the pipeline to com-
pensate for short gas supply shortfall during downtime.

2 The Basis of Estimation

Linepack is simply defined as the

volume of gas stored in a gas
pipeline segment. The gas flows
through a pipeline segment is
shown on the Fig. 1.
If there is a gas flowrate Q
flowing through a pipeline seg-
Fig. 1. Gas flows through a pipeline segment ment at pressure P1, the pressure
will gradually reduce along the
pipeline to P2 due to friction loss caused by pipeline roughness.
To estimate the linepack volume, the average pressure Pavg [1] will be determined as:
 
2 P31  P32
Pavg ¼ ; psia ð1Þ
3 P21  P22

The average gas compressibility factor can be calculated by CNGA Eq. [1]:
1
z¼   ð2Þ
Pavg 344400ð10Þ1:785G
1þ Tf3:825

where:
Pavg = Average gas pressure, psig
Tf = Average gas temperature, 0R = °F + 460
G = Gas specific gravity.
The gas volume in standard condition can be calculated as:
zst Tst P p zst Tst P
Vst ¼ V ¼ D2 L ð3Þ
z T Pst 4 z T Pst
480 Q. K. Do et al.

At standard condition, Tst = 460 + 60 = 520 0R, Pst = 14.7 psia and zst = 1
From Eq. (3) the linepack volume in scf will be calculated as:

p 1 Tst Pavg
Vlinepack ¼ 22:784 D2 L ; scf ð4Þ
4 zavg Tavg Pst

where:
Vlinepack: Volume of gas in the pipeline, scf
D: Pipeline internal diameter, inch
L: Pipeline length, km
Zavg: Average gas compressibility factor
Tavg: Average gas temperature, 0R
Pavg: Average pipeline pressure, psia
Pst: Pressure at standard condition, 14.7 psia.

3 Linepack Flexibility

The upstream facility is normally a

Central Processing Platform with
export compressors or just a com-
pression station to export the natural
gas to the pipeline. As shown on
Fig. 2, P1 is the compressor dis-
charge pressure or pipeline input
pressure, P2 is the downstream
pressure of the pipeline and P3 is the Fig. 2. Gas pipeline configuration.
required delivery pressure for the
downstream plant. The control valve
at pipeline downstream is used to regulate the pipeline downstream pressure P2 to P3
which is fixed as required from the downstream plant. P2 must be greater than P3
otherwise the downstream plant will be shut down.
The Fig. 3 shows the relationship between upstream and downstream pressure of
the pipeline. The maximum pressure Pmax is maximum allowable working pressure of
the pipeline or maximum dis-
charge pressure of the
upstream facility. The latter
must be less than the former.
The minimum pressure Pmin is
the pipeline settled out pres-
sure, at which there is no flow
through the pipeline (the
upstream facility is totally shut Fig. 3. Line-pack flexibility: the area defined by
down). When the upstream P0 P0 P0 P3 represents the gas potential storage in the
1min 1max 2
facility operates, at the steady pipeline to provide linepack flexibility [2, 3].
 Offshore Gas Pipeline Linepack to Improve the Flexibility 481

state, the upstream pressure will be at P01partialload at partial load and from P01min to P01max
at full load. The gas flowrate Q is the same for pressure P1 in between P01min and P01max .
In the ideal case, the upstream discharge pressure should be P01min then the pipeline
downstream pressure P2 = P3. There is no differential pressure across the control valve
(no energy loss) therefore less energy is consumed at upstream facility. However, there
is no linepack flexibility to compensate for the upstream operation fluctuation. If P1
drops below P01min , P2 will drop below P3 and the downstream facility will be shut
down.
If the upstream facility discharge pressure increases up to maximum pressure P01max ,
the downstream pressure will be P02 . At this state, the pipeline stores gas at its maxi-
mum capacity, the linepack flexibility is highest. The downside is that the energy loss
will be highest due to pressure differential between control valve (P02  P3 ), that means
the upstream facility must need more power to raise the upstream pressure and this
power will be consumed across pipeline downstream control valve.
The Fig. 4 describes how the pipeline
pressures changing during operation. When
the upstream facility operates at pressure P1,
flowrate Q1 and compressors running at speed
RPM1, the system works at point A where the
compressor curve intersects the pipeline
curve. To increase the linepack flexibility,
upstream pressure increases to P01 . This is not
instantly increasing. First, the compressor
increases speed to RPM2 and causes the
flowrate increase to Q01 (point A [ A0 ).
Because the flowrate at downstream is kept
Fig. 4. The relationship between
constantly at Q1, there is more gas packed to upstream facility and pipeline.
the pipeline and then the pipeline pressures
(both upstream and downstream) will gradu-
ally increase. The flowrate Q01 will decrease
back to Q1 when upstream pipeline reaches P01 (point A0 [ B. The pipeline curve also
moves up from A to B. This is the new equilibrium state, there is no more gas packed to
the pipeline.
The linepack flexibility volume Vflexibility is defined as the difference of linepack
volume between considered upstream operating condition P1 with the minimum
upstream discharge pressure P01min . The linepack flexibility will be converted to hours
by divided it to the downstream gas flowrate. This amount of time will let the upstream
operator know how much time available for them to fix the problem before it can affect
the downstream gas delivery which leads to sales gas contract penalty.
482 Q. K. Do et al.

4 Case Study

An offshore gas project including the following facilities:

– A Central Processing Platform (CPP) is 245.6 km from shore. There are two
independent gas processing trains to export the dry gas to the pipeline with the
maximum capacity of 440 MMSCFD (220 MMSCFD/train) and maximum pressure
at 2000 psig.
– A transportation gas pipeline exports the gas from CPP to onshore power plant. The
pipeline parameters are shown on Table 1.

Table 1. The linepack flexibility calculation results.

There is a capacity constraint in the sales gas delivery contract in which the gas
receiving from the power plant must be at least 375 MMSCFD.
For the sales gas contract, there is normally an agreement on number of days/year
for maintenance shutdown. However, there are still risks of short unplanned shutdown,
a few hours, due to minor equipment failure on CPP. The short downtime can be
compensated by storing the surplus gas volume in the pipeline which is called packing
the pipeline and this volume will be used during downtime (unpack the pipeline).
To estimate the time availability during unpacking the pipeline the following steps
will be carried out:

Step 1: Establish a pipeline simulation model (e.g. pipesim simulation) based on the
diagram as shown on Fig. 2 to calculate the downstream pipeline pressure P2 with
required delivery flowrate Q = 375 MMSCFD and P1 is incremental of 100 psi from
P01min to 2000 psig.

Step 2: Establish the excel spreadsheet with all the pipeline parameters to calculate the
linepack flexibility in hours as shown in Table 1.
 Offshore Gas Pipeline Linepack to Improve the Flexibility 483

After calculating the linepack flexibility,

the linepack chart as Fig. 5 is built. It shows
that when the upstream facility is running at
maximum discharge pressure at 2000 psig to
take advantage of linepack flexibility, it is at
point 1, where the linepack flexibility is about
22 h. That means whilst upstream facility is
totally shut down within 22 h, the downstream
flowrate is not affected. Point 1 will move
along the red line toward point 4. Beyond
point 4, the downstream flowrate starts to Fig. 5. Upstream facility operating sce-
decline, the sales gas delivery contract is vio- narios with linepack flexibility
lated, and then the contract penalty will be
applied. Within 22 h, if the upstream facility
can recover to full capacity, there are some recovery scenarios as following:
Scenario 1: Upstream facility recovers to it full capacity (440 MMSCFD) e.g. at point
3, the operating point will move to point 8 and gradually moves along the green line to
point 10 and then back to the normal operating at point 1 where the upstream facility
operates at the same flowrate as the delivery flowrate at downstream (375 MMSCFD).
Scenario 2: One production train recovers to it full capacity (220 MMSCFD) e.g. at
point 2, the operating point will move to point 6 and then along the yellow line to point
5. If at this point, the other production train also recovers at full capacity, the total
capacity of two trains will be 440 MMSCFD, the operating point will move from point
5 to point 9, toward point 10 and gets flowrate equilibrium at point 1.
If there is only one train shut down, the linepack flexibility will be about 54 h, point
1 will move to point 7 and then moves along the yellow line toward point 4. If the other
train can recover to it full capacity e.g. at point 5, the operating point will move from
point 5 to point 9, 10 and then back to normal at point 1.

5 Conclusion

This paper provides a quick method to calculate the linepack flexibility in hours to
build the linepack chart to estimate the time availability to fix the minor incidents at
upstream facility. The linepack flexibility can be used only if the maximum capacity of
the upstream facility is higher than the demand otherwise there will have no extra gas to
be packed to the pipeline.
The downside of using linepack is that it requires power (through upstream com-
pressors) to keep extra gas volume stored in the pipeline. The linepack flexibility
should be optimized to reduce the unnecessary power loss by using the margin of
design capacity.
484 Q. K. Do et al.

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