AltaGas has invested roughly $400 million in upgrades and other work at the Harmattan Gas Processing Complex east of Highway 22 and north of Highway 584 since taking over ownership of the plant in 2008, say officials.
One of the main reasons the company has invested that amount of money is to reduce greenhouse gases and modernize the plant, Dave Fife, operations manager of the complex, said during a recent tour of the facility.
AltaGas officials have reduced greenhouse gases at the complex by replacing old gas-driven compression with gas turbines, electric compression and low NOX high-speed gas compression, he said.
The company has also replaced gas-fired steam boilers with heat recovery steam generators that utilize the hot exhaust gases from the gas turbines to generate steam, he said.
Workers have installed two cogeneration facilities capable of producing 30 megawatts of power to run plant equipment and supply power to the Alberta power grid, he said.
“The heat recovery steam generators connected to the exhausts of the turbines are capable of producing all of the steam required to process gas at Harmattan,” said Fife.
Workers have installed a co-stream facility and 86 kilometres of 24-inch pipeline and replaced the compressor with low NOX and electric compression.
Workers have also replaced refrigeration compression with gas turbine and installed a 4-inch HVP pipeline to the Didsbury loading terminal.
“Harmattan extracts natural gas liquids (NGL) from the raw natural gas delivered for processing, fractionates the recovered NGL into specification ethane, propane, butane and condensate and provides storage and terminal services for each product,” he said.
The company is currently working on future investments at the plant, including installing a cogeneration-three facility in 2015, and installing two electric compressors to replace three older gas-fired compressors.
“Harmattan is well positioned as a high-volume, low-cost processing facility providing reliable and efficient gas processing in its service area,” he said.
One of the largest gas plants in Alberta, Harmattan has a natural gas capacity of 490 Mmcf/d (million standard cubic feet per day) of sour gas treating, NGL extraction and 35,000 Bbls/d (barrels per day) of NGL fractionation and terminalling, he explained.
The current production is limited to 400 Mmcf/d.
Harmattan also has a 350 Bbls/d capacity frac oil processing facility, a 175 tonnes per day capacity industrial grade CO2 facility and an 8,500 Bbls/d capacity NGL truck offload facility, he said.
Officials take pride in their safety record.
“Harmattan has an excellent safety record, 3,030 days or approximately 8.3 years without a lost-time incident. More than eight years without a lost-time injury is a long time and demonstrates the staff's commitment at the plant to work safely,” he said.
Although it is a large plant, there are only 70 employees needed to run the facility because many of its operations are now automated.
There are mechanical and welding services on site, as well as a warehouse. There are 22 maintenance people on staff.
The complex has been operating since 1960 and has had several different ownerships over the years.
It began operating as Canadian Superior Oil in 1960. Mobil Oil Canada took ownership in 1985. NovaGas Canada LTD/TransCanada Midstream took ownership in 1997, Solex Gas Processing LP in 2002, Taylor Processing Inc. in 2005, and AltaGas in 2008.
In 1960, stage 1 facilities were built as a conservation measure to collect oilfield separator gas, dehydrate the gas, and compress and inject the gas back into the reservoir.
In 1989, new flare and drain facilities were installed to commingle the plant flare gases into one main stack from several single source flare stacks. This was constructed to reduce the amount of flaring within the plant.
In 2003, stabilized condensate C5+ (pentane) used for was further fractionated to C9+ frac oil in the facility. The frac oil is stored on site and the product is transported off site by truck via a loading facility located on site.
In 2008, officials installed a 5,000 HP gas turbine for residue gas compression to TransCanada pipeline (TCPL) system and recovery of waste heat to pre-heat the medium oil.
“The installation of the gas turbine shut down six high NOX gas driven compressors,” he said.
In 2014, officials installed two 2,400 HP gas driven low NOX inlet compressors.
“The installation of these compressors allowed the shutdown of four high NOX gas driven compressors,” he said.
The complex is also a community supporter and officials regularly donate to various organizations in the community. It is a member of the Sundre Petroleum Operators Group (SPOG).
It is a 24-hour operation.
“Almost all of the stuff that we produce here stays in Alberta,” he said.
AltaGas delivers natural gas to more than 550,000 utility customers. Its subsidiaries deliver natural gas to end-users in British Columbia, Alberta, Nova Scotia, Michigan and Alaska.
AltaGas went from having a seed capital of $37,000 in 1994 to an enterprise value of $9.4 billion today.
The company has reduced direct greenhouse gas emissions by 1.5 million tonnes at all its operations since 2008, he said.
