Services

There are many things that need to happen to bring natural gas from the wellhead to your home and business.

When natural gas producers have finished drilling a well, they are ready for midstream services, also known as gathering and processing. A gathering system looks a lot like a spider web, but in reality, it is more like a funnel, accumulating gas volumes into a central location for processing.

We do the same offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, except at the bottom of the ocean, thousands of feet below the surface level. Offshore, we install and operate both oil and natural gas gathering pipelines for producers.

Gathering
Most natural gas is not ready for use when it comes out of the ground. The gas stream may contain moisture, impurities or valuable liquids like propane. The raw natural gas is delivered from the well to a processing plant through pipelines. The gas is compressed to help move large volumes through piping.

Processing
When raw gas reaches a natural gas processing plant, the water is removed, or dehydrated, and the gas and valuable liquids are separated. The most common method of extracting the liquids is to cool the gas to extremely low, or cryogenic, temperatures to condense gases heavier than methane.

Fractionation
Fractional distillation towers further refine the liquids from the gas processing plant. The most common products of fractionation are ethane-propane mix, propane, iso-butane, normal butane and natural gasoline.