Pumping Caspian oil Wärtsilä

A Wärtsilä gas power plant

PUMPING CASPIAN OIL

The Finnish company Wärtsilä is a world leader in power solutions such as engines for ships and power plants for electricity generation. The company is also a major supplier of heavy-duty engines for the production and transport of oil and gas. Joseph Altham spoke to Tomas Rönn, Wärtsilä’s director, Oil and Gas Business, to find out how the company’s technology is helping to bring the world’s oil to where it is needed.

The BTC pipeline stretches from Baku in Azerbaijan to Ceyhan in Turkey

A Wärtsilä engine driving a compressor at an underground gas storage in Hungary

Oil does not emerge from the ground as if by magic. Oil and gas have to be extracted from under the ground or from under the seabed, and oil production therefore demands power. At the oilfield, power is needed for drilling, pumping and processing. Many oilfields are situated in remote locations and cannot be connected to any power grid, so oilfield sites have to be capable of generating power for themselves. “You need electricity for everything that you do,” said Mr Rönn, “not only for the processing equipment but also for the lighting and the facilities for the crew.”

Wärtsilä produces power plants for oilfields, engines for crude oil pumping and compression solutions for gas gathering and processing. As a means of power generation, Wärtsilä’s engines provide a higher level of efficiency than traditional alternatives. “Compared to gas turbines, our engine technology is very efficient. A 10MW gas turbine has a 30 per cent electrical efficiency, but a 10MW unit from Wärtsilä gives you an electrical efficiency of about 45 per cent.”

Technology

In the oil and gas industry, the consequences of a fault can be ruinously expensive. Wärtsilä’s engines are therefore designed and built for continuous reliability. Production is based at the company’s factories in Vaasa and Trieste. “We supply the whole world from these

A pumping station along the BTC pipeline

GEA Westfalia Separator Group

GEA Westfalia Separator Group is a leading supplier of system solutions for liquid fuel treatment for power generation. With its comprehensive portfolio of fuel treatment and conditioning solutions GEA Westfalia Separator Group has a unique experience in the field of power generation delivering high quality process engineering and innovative technology to meet the growing energy demand.

The engine of the sustainable success of GEA Westfalia Separator Group is the ability to supply customized system solutions that are able to fulfill the requirements of engine manufacturers.

For many decades, GEA Westfalia Separator Group has been working in very close partnership with the Finnish engine manufacturer Wärtsilä to jointly develop and provide integrated solutions tailored to meet the needs of the power industry contributing to a future-proof energy supply.

SHW Casting Technologies

Established in the year 1365, SHW Casting Technologies is the oldest industrial company in Germany. With this long tradition, SHW Casting Technologies is engaged for his partner WARTSILA in producing large enging blocks and cylinder heads in sustainable quality.

With high-precision manufacturing technologies, high quality castings and functional, customized design SHW Casting Technology is market leader in Europe for large engines up to 100 tons. All products can be delivered ready for assembly.

SHW Casting Technologies is part of the CT-Group, a strong foundry cooperation with four plants in Germany and one in the USA.

factories,” said Mr Rönn. “We developed the first heavy fuel oil engine back in the 1970s. We continue to develop the technology of our engines in order to improve their ability to run on complex fuels.”

The acceptance of complex fuels is one of the key advantages of Wärtsilä’s engines, which are designed to use the fuel from the well. “The engines can run on different kinds of fuels, both the crude oil from the well and the associated gas.” Wärtsilä’s engines function in desert temperatures as well as in cold climates and can be powered by a combination of liquid and gaseous fuels. Because an oil well’s output is variable, Wärtsilä offers engines that can be adjusted to burn gaseous and liquid fuels in different ratios. “The quality of the fuel changes over time but with our technology the engines will cope with these changes.”

BTC pipeline

Although thousands of articles have been written on the subject of ‘pipeline politics’, the engineering behind the pipelines is seldom appreciated. Pushing oil along the pipeline takes power and Wärtsilä’s engines for pumping play a vital role in oil transporta-

Tomas Rönn and Bent Svensson, the Program Manager of GGFR, at the signing ceremony when Wärtsilä became a partner of GGFR.

A Wärtsilä generating set ready to be delivered to a customer from the factory in Vaasa, Finland.

tion. In Ecuador, Wärtsilä’s pumping units are employed in the heavy crude oil pipeline that carries oil from the oil receiving terminal in Lago Agrio to the port of Esmeraldas.

In Turkey, Wärtsilä delivered the pumps and drivers for the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline. The pipeline, whose total length is 1820 kilometres, transports oil from the Caspian Sea through Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey to the port of Ceyhan on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast. The BTC pipeline has a maximum capacity of one million barrels of oil per day.

The operators of the pipeline, the BTC Consortium, awarded the construction contracts to three different companies, one for each country. In Turkey, the job was given to the Botas Petroleum Pipeline Company. Botas, in turn, employed Wärtsilä to supply the pumps for the project. The Turkish section of the pipeline is the longest and runs for 1076 kilometres. Part of the Turkish section is through mountainous regions and the four pumping stations in Turkey are at altitudes of between 1600 and 2140 metres.

“We made the engines that drive the pumps and our advisors helped the main contractor. High up in the mountains it is essential that the combustion engines do not lose output. The engines run on natural gas, as there is a natural gas pipeline nearby. The pipeline requires a lot of power and the engines generate nearly 100MW.”

Flaring

Thanks to the BTC pipeline, oil can be shipped in tankers from Ceyhan, which relieves at least some of the congestion in the Bosphorus. Meanwhile Wärtsilä is working to reduce the incidence of gas flaring on oilfields. Gas flaring is when the natural gas associated with oil production is simply burnt off at the site. This not only adds to the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere but also wastes a valuable resource.

Wärtsilä has joined the World Bank’s Global Gas Flaring Reduction partnership, which helps oil-producing countries to find worthwhile uses for this gas. One possible answer would be to use Wärtsilä’s engines to generate electricity but Mr Rönn is the first to admit that there are circumstances where another option might be more suitable. “Flaring is a huge global problem. The GGFR partnership brings governments and oil companies together and we are all cooperating in the search for a solution.” n