Twister announced today that Ecopetrol has selected Twister technology to dehydrate, hydrocarbon and dewpoint the gas at a new processing plant at their onshore Gibraltar field in Colombia. The contract for the construction and initial operation of the plant has been awarded to Gas Gibraltar, a partnership between Gasmocam and Twister.
This is the second South American oil and gas company to select Twister. Petrobras are currently installing a Twister unit at their onshore gas treatment plant, Estação Geofísico Vandemir Ferreira de Oliveira (EVF DPP), which processes gas from the Manati platform (PMNT-1), both located in the Bahia state in north-east Brazil. The Twister gas processing module will be used for dehydrating and dewpointing Manati gas, before it is delivered as sales gas.
An onshore chemical-free Twister gas processing module is also currently being installed in Nigeria for dehydrating and dewpointing gas, which will be supplied as fuel to the 970MW Afam V1 power plant, owned and operated by Shell Petroleum Development Company. The selected Twister designs benefited from extensive Twister testing and operating experience at five onshore gas plants in the Netherlands, Nigeria and Norway, as well as almost five years of successful full scale commercial operation on the Petronas/SSB B11 facility offshore, East Malaysia.
Twister technology treats gas at supersonic velocities, extracting water and hydrocarbon liquids. Compared to conventional technologies, the Twister process requires no chemicals and hence, reduces environmental emissions and exposure to hazardous gas. It has no moving parts, permits near instant start up and allows considerable cost reduction, particularly for offshore installations.
Twister, which is based in the Netherlands, was launched by Shell Technology Ventures in April 2000, and holds significant experience in natural gas processing technology development, plant delivery and operational support.