Africa’s largest flare to power project

The goal is simple. Reducing costs and improving efficiency of oil & gas operations all while reducing emissions as part of the World Bank’s Zero Routine Flaring by 2030 (ZRF).

With one of the biggest oil fields in the western desert, our customer has a goal to reduce flaring by 40% in Egypt and required an efficient innovative solution to inch closer to the goal in line with their long-term strategy.

Operating with scattered diesel generators over every single well and when gas capacity is reached, the only solution is to shut in production or send excess gas to flare, the result is significant costs to electrify the production field and an impact on the environment through the emission of CO2, black carbon, and other pollutants. Also, it is wasting a valuable energy resource that could be used to advance the sustainable development of Egypt.

As their existing power partner, we were first in line to offer support. Following extensive consultations and the results from the gas analysis extracted from site by Aggreko’s Gas Chromatograph. We were confident that we had a compelling environmental, technical and commercial solution.

We proposed a solution to help reduce emissions and improve operations supporting our customer’s Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) goal of reducing routine flaring in upstream operations in Egypt and eliminate 1 million tonnes of CO2 from its operations in three years.

Technical Offering

We delivered a bespoke centralised power plant using gas-fired generators, transformers, and a complete package of ancillaries eliminating the use of the diesel powered generators.

All 26 wells are connected through an overhead transmission line and supplied with 8 MW of continuous power, with the ability to scale up to 15 MW allowing for further expansions making it the largest flare to power project in Africa. The remaining megawatts supply the field’s accommodation and living quarters, as well as part of the field’s water disposal system.

The inbuilt optimum spinning reserve and redundancy ensures that all load changes are handled smoothly with zero disruptions. 

Our PLC load management system is connected to the gas chromatograph to alert in case of any changes to the gas quality giving the order to the sets to change the outcome and maintain the 10 MW.

Along with our bespoke engineered solution, we are providing the highest safety standards and best in class operations and maintenance services with 24/7 support.

Commercial Offering

The project is structured so that it can either be extended, or the client can purchase the entire plant at the end of the project. This provides commercial flexibility by allowing the customer to only pay for the MWH for every MW consumed above 10 MW and removing the need for heavy upfront capital investment allowing both parties to focus on their strengths.

With the largest flare to power site in Africa, our customer can now drill easy with minimal flaring, a total saving of around USD 25 million during the contract duration, annual carbon emissions savings of 52,348.5 Tons of C02 while saving around 80,000 litres of diesel per day. All these, coupled with zero downtime, reduced nonproductive time and lowered risk of vehicle-related incidents with the removal of diesel transport trucks from the road.

The project is operated by a combination of international and local skilled workforce with a training plan in place and facility on site to ensure ongoing skills transfer.