Gas Plant Tour

Okotoks Western Wheel
July 2, 2008 Vol 33 No 43

Francis Sinclair-Smith was born to Robert and Annie Sinclair-Smith of Montifieth, Scotland on May 7, 1894. He received his education at Bedford School. While there, he excelled in the sport of rowing.

Introduction Canada was the first nation which found itself forced to treat large quantities of natural gas containing high percentages of hydrogen sulphide. In the early years Canadians worked with what was available, and in later years went on to pioneer some of the production techniques, a number of the processing procedures, and some of the metallurgy required to meet the challenge. Prior to the building of the Trans Canada Pipe Line and the West Coast Transmission Pipe Line in the mid-1950s most of the natural gas used did not contain elevated levels of hydrogen sulphide. Exceptions were, first, the Madison Natural Gas Company plant at Turner Valley, Alberta and later, the Texaco installations at Bonnie Glen and the Shell facility at Jumping Pound. The building of the two pipelines meant that there was a growing demand for natural gas, and to meet it, much on the natural gas with high levels of hydrogen sulphide and CO2 is widely distributed in nature and is a minor component of air. It is highly soluble in water and oil, especially under pressure. In water, it occurs as carbonic acid, a weak acid that can donate one or two hydrogen ions in neutralization reactions that produce bicarbonate HCO3- and carbonate CO3-2 salts or ions. CO2, being an acid in water, reacts instantly with NaOH or KOH in an alkaline water mud, forming carbonate and bicarbonate ions. Similarly, it reacts with Ca(OH)2 (lime) to form insoluble calcium carbonate and water. ">carbon dioxide along the Rocky Mountain foothills and in northeastern British Columbia was required.

From the HERALD archives back to 1883

Over a hundred oil brokers have already taken out licences. The oil fever from which Calgary is suffering at the present time is being reflected very markedly at the city hall, where little business is being transacted, owing to the fact that people seem incapable of thinking and talking about anything but oil shares, leases, and prospects. The general rush to invest savings in oil shares and stocks is reflected in the receipts of the electric light department, where the revenue has fallen off about half, and it has been found necessary to put on a number of extra collectors to bring receipts up to the normal. The receipts in the water-works department shows a similar falling off.

Bonar A.(Sandy) Gow

Crude oil and wheat have long represented for eastern Canadians what Alberta is all about. Rotary drilling rigs, flare pits, pump jacks, and refineries have been blended together with golden wheat fields, combines and grain elevators in the minds of easterners until they have come to be seen as the key to Alberta's economic good fortune. In this there is the usual element of truth. But natural gas, like the less glamorous cereal grains, oats and barley, remains largely in the background; it does not come to the fore with the same frequency, nor does it evoke the same vivid imagery. Similarly, the evolution of gas technology does not attract quite the same attention or interest as the technology behind the extraction of oil from tar sands or new methods of drilling at odd angles or great depths.

EVOLUTION OF ROYALTIES

The original Oil Royalties are those reserved by the owner of the petroleum and natural gas rights underlying the tract under development. These, known as "Landowner's Gross Royalty", represent a stipulated percentage of the barrels produced, or the revenue therefrom, and are subject to no deductions whatsoever. They rank prior to all other interests in the well or tract.

All three are chemical engineering graduates from University of Alberta, all three have worked in Turner Valley and all three are retired. Out of the multitude of people involved with that erstwhile giant, these three Gordons probably made the greatest contribution of all by bringing unitization into reality after long years of Waste.

If there is one word that epitomizes the early days of Turner Valley, that word is 'waste'. Its antithesis: "conservation" would become the central pre-occupation of regulatory organizations created in 1932 and 1938. The inexorable thrust of a naptha-oriented economy had been guiding the fate of Turner Valley. Despite expert warnings as early as 1931, the final solution would not be reached until 1958. Hard-fought slow progress was achieved by F.P. Fisher, George Granger Brown, Gordon Connell and many others to reach unitization, 34 years too late.

... A Seaboard Scrubbing Plant in the summer of 1925 initiated gas processing... The original plant consisted of six wooden grid packed scrubbers, each three feet in diameter by sixty feet in height, operating at a pressure of 315 pounds per square inch; two wooden grid packed pacifiers, each 15 feet in diameter by 54 feet in height, operating at atmospheric pressure; one 3 feet by 123 feet stack which carried off hydrogen sulphide gas to the atmosphere... This plant was enlarged... so that by 1928 it had a capacity of sixty million cubic feet per day... The facility was modernized in 1935 when the wooden grid type scrubbers were replaced by bubble cap type scrubbers. This change increased the capacity to seventy-five million cubic feet per day... (in 1941), a Girbotol unit with a normal capacity of fifty million cubic feet per day and an emergency capacity of seventy-two million cubic feet per day was installed...

The American Standard cable-tool drilling rig, utilizing a cable (hemp rope and later steel) for lifting or lowering the drilling tools and a separate "sand" line for lifting or lowering the bailer, was in use in Western Canada as late as 1947 (Alliance Trans Alberta No.2, Lsd2, Sec.18, Twp.20, Rge.1W4M). The majority of cable-tool rigs were characterized by framed wooden derricks with a long attached shed with enclosed engine. The exposed steam boiler, with its characteristically high smoke stack adjoined the other end of the linear shed. The singular identifying feature or hallmark of the cable-tool rig was its "walking beam" which by controlled rocking, served to activate the stroke of the cable and the resultant alternating percussion and churning of the chisel type bit. Between the end of the cable and the bit were the "jars" or large metal links used to facilitate the freeing of a stuck bit.

Exploratory drilling at Turner Valley was encouraged by the presence of gas seeps along the Sheep River. The Calgary Petroleum Products (Dingman) No.1 tests, spudded in 1913, hit hydrocarbon-bearing section on May 14, 1914 at a depth of 1158.3 (3800 feet) in Lower Cretaceous sandstones. Gas, naptha and light oil were recovered from several horizons. The Royalite No.4 well, started in 1922, was drilled to the Mississippian Rundle Group carbonates and in October 1924 discovered gas and condensate at a depth of 2068.9m (3507 feet). Following the Royalite No.4 discovery, numerous step outs were drilled along the strike and exploitation of the gas accumulation began with no serious thought of the possibility of an oil column. It was noted, however that several wells producing gas and naptha from the Mississippian on the west flank of the structure were yielding slightly discoloured product and the existence of an oil leg began to be suspected. In 1930 the Model No.1 well was completed at a depth of 1801.1m (5905 feet). The gravity of the produced distillate decreased steadily during the first few months of production and the existence of an oil leg became apparent. In 1936, after almost two years of drilling, Turner Valley Royalties No.1, near the south end of the field, struck oil at 1950.7m (6400 feet) and the era of oil production began at Turner Valley.