Publications

Some of the big undeveloped gas resources in Malaysia are mercury contaminated fields and successful monetization of these fields will require use of technology which is commercially attractive. Petronas plans to develop one of the technically challenging mercury contaminated gas fields located in 45m water depth in the South China Sea. There are different schemes used within the industry to develop such fields. Petronas has chosen an approach where industry players and PSC (production sharing contract) partners were involved to provide technical and commercial inputs. Mercury is not only hazardous to human health but is also viewed as an issue in processing of natural gas, especially in operations involving liquefaction where it could lead to catastrophic failure of downstream equipment. This paper will describe the techniques and methodology used in concept identification and selection for development of mercury contaminated fields. A screening study was conducted to identify and evaluate a range of development options for proposing a technically and commercially attractive concept for selection and basic engineering. The project objectives, drivers and development scenarios were introduced and populated in a mind-map format for quick analysis. The screening methodology included coarse screening of a number of alternatives by utilizing building blocks. A high-level screening was also conducted on the available mercury removal technologies to identify equipment with lower life- cycle costs, weight and greater installed experience. A series of development scenarios have been considered and were found to be technically attractive. Based upon qualitative risk analysis, the location of Mercury Removal Unit was found to be one of the major considerations during concept identification and selection. The factors contributing most to selection of concept include capex, operability and overall risk. Technical review of the available MRU technologies reveals that most vendors offer similar sized gas and condensate MRUs but differ significantly in the cost of adsorbent replacement over a 20 year life-cycle. The methodology used along with proposed screening criteria can be utilized to provide an optimum development scenario for all similar mercury contaminated gas fields.