Hawiyah NGL Recovery Project: Operational Considerations during Project Design
Authors: Alanazi Khalid E. 
Published: February 2016

Saudi Aramco new NGL Recovery Project has been managed by an integrated team from project managements and proponent. Project management team members have used their project management's techniques and expertise to maintain quality, budget and schedule. Proponent team members have enriched the project with the necessary technical and field experience in order to capture and implement all operational requirements during project design.

Operations representation varies from one multi-discipline representative to different discipline representatives, i.e. process, mechanical, electrical and process control. Proponent team members have used their technical and field experience, lesson learned from previous projects and existing plant, plant and equipment 3D models review, HAZOP reviews, and value engineering sessions to achieve the project objectives.

Ultimate operations goals are to ensure safe operation, superior operating modes, sustaining production and preserving resources. Discussion covers operational enhancements that have been incorporated in the design to optimize process and widen operating range. Maintenance objective is to simplify maintenance activities, reduce maintenance cost, and extend equipment life. Many examples will be revealed including rotating / static equipment maintenance enhancement, maintenance accessibility, and spare parts managements.

It was observed that the project design approval cycle went very smooth due to the participation of the main reviewers in the design. Decisions were made in timely manner. Design changes and optimization were finalized during design phase resulting in minimizing rework during construction.

In conclusion, great advantages related to project cost and schedule management due to the proper equipment selection and the time consuming construction reworks avoidance have been highlighted. Finally, the achievement of smooth turn over from project team to operations will be discussed.

This subject is considered very significant since it highlight the importance of injecting operations expertise in the project management team in order to incorporate their needs and requirement early in the design.

INTRODUCTION

Hawiyah NGL Recovery Project is a new stand-alone gas processing plant to recover ethane plus (C2+) NGL from approximately 4.0 Billion SCFD of sales gas. The feeding sales gas is supplied free of acid gases and water by two upstream gas plants, Hawiyah gas plant (HGP) and Haradh gas plant (HdGP). The NGL recovery plant process design is based on the typical cryogenic expansion process configuration.

The new NGL plant will include installation of two Gas Treating trains to remove Carbon Dioxide (CO2), three identical NGL recovery trains and four Residue Gas Compression trains with all supporting facilities to include utilities, Process Control System (PCS), electrical power supply, communications facilities, administration and operation support buildings. Each NGL train consists of a molecular sieve dehydration system, turbo-expander-compressor package, Propane refrigeration system, heat exchangers, separation equipment and NGL product surge pumping system.

At the beginning of the project, the project design / management team was constructed to include parties from project management and operations (proponent). Operations' project members were selected from existing gas plants with expertise in gas processing, mechanical equipment, electrical systems, process control systems and instrumentation. The main objective for the operations team members is to transfer and incorporate field experience into the plant design early in the design stage to enhance the process, increase reliability and avoid major design changes later on. In addition, those members will work as the single point of contact between the project design team and the central engineering departments beside the engineering contractor in order to ensure compliance to applicable standards and codes.

OPERATION & PROCESS CONSIDERATIONS

Major process improvement ideas were thoroughly evaluated among the design team and then discussed with central engineering departments within Saudi Aramco. The major process improvement ideas which were incorporated into the project design were related to Gas Dehydration Process, Heat Medium system, Inlet Gas Pipelines Configuration and the Flare System.