History of The Petroleum Industry in Canada (natural Gas) - Gas Conservation After Leduc

Gas Conservation After Leduc

As Alberta became an ever-larger oil producer after the Leduc discovery, the Conservation Board acted to prevent any repetition of the natural gas waste so common in Turner Valley. The board developed a broad conservation policy for natural gas. It prohibited producing natural gas from an oil reservoir's gas cap before the oil was fully produced, and included provisions aimed at conserving the natural gas often produced along with the oil. For this reason, these plants became known as "gas conservation plants."

The first of these new plants was Imperial's Leduc facility (sometimes called Imperial Devon or Imperial Leduc). It sweetened the gas with monoethanolamine (MEA), then extracted the liquid hydrocarbons by refrigeration. Northwestern Utilities Limited bought the gas at $14.12 per thousand cubic metres and distributed it in Edmonton. Trucks transported the propane, butane and "pentanes plus" (the Canadian term for heavier gas liquids) until 1954, when three pipelines began moving the products from Imperial Leduc to Edmonton. When markets could not be found for the propane, the board occasionally granted permission to flare it.

The next important plant built in Canada resulted from the discovery in 1944 of a wet sour gas find by Shell Oil at Jumping Pound, west of Calgary. Calgary, Exshaw (where there was a cement factory) and Banff were all potential markets for Jumping Pound gas, but the sour gas first required processing and sweetening. The gas plant began operating in 1951.

Built "California-style," with few buildings or other provisions for a cold climate, the original Jumping Pound plant ran into problems. During the first winter, water condensation and other cold weather problems led to one operational failure after another. When the second winter arrived, buildings sheltered most of the facilities. Shell Jumping Pound is sometimes referred to as Canada's "sour gas laboratory," for much of the industry's early understanding of sour gas processing came from experience there. It was the first sulfur plant in the world, its sulfur unit going into production in 1952. For this distinction it narrowly beat out the Madison Natural Gas plant which began extracting sulfur at Turner Valley later the same year.

As the Westcoast and TransCanada natural gas pipelines went into operation in 1957, a new and better day dawned for Canadian gas processing. Most of the gas that travelled those pipelines needed processing to meet the specifications of pipeline companies. Consequently, the late 1950s and early 1960s saw a boom in gas plant construction.

In 1957, a new gas plant at Taylor, near Fort St. John, British Columbia, began supplying Westcoast Transmission Co. Ltd. This plant's practices differed from those used in Alberta in a number of ways. For example, although it generally required dehydration, sweetening and processing for liquid hydrocarbons, companies transported the natural gas from northeastern British Columbia long distances before processing it further. Consequently, while planning the Westcoast pipeline, the field operators agreed to process all the gas at a single facility, rather than have individual gas plants in every major production area. At 10 million cubic metres per day, the Taylor plant had the capacity to process as much natural gas as all eleven of the other gas plants operating in Canada combined. The plant was also by far Canada's most northerly. Heavily insulated buildings protected the processing facilities and allowed them to function at temperatures typical of more southerly climes.