Transporting economically viable compressed gas liquids from remote fields
Even with the re-emerging CNG technology, there still remains a need for an economically viable,
efficient and flexible trans-ocean transportation system for moving natural gas from the remote or
stranded fields to market. Also, any marine gas transportation system must provide both the
producer and the market value. The emergence of CGL Carrier using
Compressed Gas Liquid (CGL) technology is designed to fill this void.
CGL transport gains its advantages from proven gas property research work. This work has
confirmed that under exact conditions of pressure, temperature along with specific mixture
compositions, a more dense volumetric packing of the natural gas can be attained within a given
volume than can be achieved in the same space using natural gas alone under the same
conditions.
The concept of carrying more gas within a liquid matrix of NGL’s has given rise to the term
'Compressed Gas Liquid' for this method of transport. The term 'LNG Lite' has also been
used to describe its relatively higher volumetric storage ratio (compared to CNG) using less exotic
equipment and at substantially lower CAPEX and OPEX than that required for LNG systems.
With its pipeline roots, the CGL™ concept deploys a continuous large diameter steel pipeline
packed within the cargo holds of a converted vessel or above deck on a new-build vessel for
transporting the production gas as a liquefied cargo.
Fig:Integral CGL carrier
In an integral carrier transportation model , the CGL Carrier is entirely self-contained.
It carries CGL processing equipment on one side of the ship to load the raw production or
conditioned natural gas and create the storage liquid for containment within the pipeline cargo
system. On the other side of the carrier, an offloading process train is provided to separate the
natural gas from its NGL 'solvent'. The natural gas is offloaded and the NGL returned to storage
within the pipeline system ready to load the next shipment.
In a shuttle carrier transportation model, a loading barge is placed at the production gas source,
where the raw production gas is loaded directly from the field onto the barge. The loading barge
has all the necessary raw gas conditioning and CGL processing equipment to load
the entire conditioned produced natural gas in a liquid form onto the CGLC and into the
refrigerated pipeline cargo system. At the market end, the CGLC unloads the liquefied gas cargo
onto an offloading barge that segregates the NGL’s into their individual components
allowing for refined products to the required specification into a receiving pipeline or storage
system.
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