Qatargas starts up PMP

Qatargas has announced the successful start-up of the Plateau Maintenance Project (PMP), which aims to ensure that the production capacity of Qatargas 1 is maintained at 10 million tpa of LNG for many years to come. 

The PMP involved drilling and recompleting offshore wells, adding new onshore facilities for sulfur handling, and modifying existing LNG production trains 1, 2 and 3.

The onshore project had a major ‘brownfield’ component. The nature of the work presented a special challenge that required tremendous communication and alignment between several departments across Qatargas.

Khalid Bin Khalifa Al Thani, Chief Executive Officer, Qatargas, said: “This is indeed a significant achievement for Qatargas.  We want to ensure Qatargas 1 can produce 10 million tpa until the end of the concession in 2021 and well beyond. The Plateau Maintenance Project will help deliver that capability and enable Qatargas to continue to supply LNG safely and reliably to its customers. The project is yet another important milestone in Qatargas’ journey towards its Vision 2015, namely to be the World’s Premier LNG Company. “

Khalid Bin Abdulla Al Thani, Qatargas Chief Operating Officer – Engineering and Ventures, added: “The highest priorities on this project were the safety of our workforce and ensuring no impacts to existing Qatargas assets or production. We added significant new onshore facilities to accommodate the increased volumes of feed gas and hydrogen sulfide (H2S) from new wells. The additional quantities of H2S will be treated in the new onshore sulfur plant built as part of the project. The new sulfur plant is capable of treating over 1 billion ft3/d of offshore feed gas. Numerous new and upgraded compression and utility units were also added.”

James Ierubino, Qatargas PMP Project Manager, said: “The project team, along with our contractors, have worked over 42 million man-hours in a very difficult operating plant work environment, achieving world class safety performance, including an exceptional Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR) of 0.23 for every 200 000 hours worked (which equals one medical treatment or lost time injury occurring for every 1.25 million hours worked).”

Adapted from press release by Callum O'Reilly

Read the article online at: https://www.lngindustry.com/liquefaction/16102014/qatargas-starts-up-pmp-1601/