This paper presents the challenges faced by PETRONAS in ensuring a secure and sustainable gas supply to meet the market demand for the PGU project. Key to the success are good knowledge and understanding of gas demand trends, integrated long term gas fields development planning, and early identification of future gas supply challenges.
Gas demand projections and current observed trends, trends of existing gas development projects and environments surrounding future gas development are discussed. Technologies and strategies that are expected to have a positive impact on future developments are also discussed.
The information provided in the Paper supports the following observations and conclusions;realistic gas demand forecast is essential to ensure that supply capacity matches the demand;integrated long term gas fields development planning requires consideration of gas market, available delivery capacity, technical readiness of the field, available pipeline and processing capacity ullage to tie-in other fields, ability to provide security of gas supply to meet demand fluctuations, requirement to provide infrastructure for possible tie-in of future gas fieldsthe challenges of future gas supply are to develop smaller gas fields, gas fields located in remote location, gas fields having high CO2 content and enhancing reliability of supply.
Introduction
Gas utilisation masterplan was conducted in 1981 to evaluate the optimal utilisation of natural gas for the benefit of the national economy. The main focus of the evaluation was to maximise utilisation of natural gas towards reducing Malaysia's dependence on crude oil and petroleum products, providing security of energy supply at prices that would be attractive to support the Government's programme for industrialisation and minimising the wastage of associated gas. Gas utilisation for petrochemical and fertilizer industries for domestic and export market prospects was also analysed. A center piece of Malaysia's energy diversification effort is the implementation of Peninsular Gas Utilization (PGU) project, the biggest domestic gas scheme in South East Asia. The PGU project is an integral part of Malaysia's economic development plans and involves the construction and installation of facilities to enable the production, processing and transmission of gas to end-users throughout Peninsular Malaysia.
PETRONAS, the national oil company and custodian of the petroleum resources, is responsible for overall management of petroleum operations in Malaysia. The upstream gas operations offshore Peninsular Malaysia are managed by joint ventures between PETRONAS and PSC partners. EPMI and PCSB are currently the main operators of gas fields offshore Terengganu. The new player in upstream gas operation is IPC with the first gas delivery by late 1999. Under the present supply arrangement, PETRONAS itself purchases the gas from PSC partners and remains the owner until delivery to the customers. PGB, a subsidiary to PETRONAS acts as a throughput company to accept, process and transmit gas in bulk to PETRONAS customers. The objective of this Paper is to outline the challenges to ensure a secure and sustainable gas supply to PGU project. The Paper is structured as follows; gas demand, resources and production, existing upstream development, downstream facilities and, supply challenges.
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