[NATURALGAS]
Category:
Power_Grid
Date:
1998-05-19 21:03:34
Subject:
Natural Gas: A Vital But Noncompliant Industry
Comment:
This position paper is not available elsewhere on the Web. I am using
my site to gain wider distribution for it.
The writer has worked for fifteen years for National Fuel Gas. He
spent seven years as a computer programmer and systems analyst
working on computerized materials management, purchasing, and oil
and gas accounting systems in an IBM mainframe environment. The
primary languages were COBOL and CICS (IBM's teleprocessing
language). Since then the writer has worked eight years as a database
administrator, working with Software AG's ADABAS database, and
the NATURAL programming language. His duties include software
installations, maintenance and tuning, and database design work. Since
1997, he has also begun working as a database administrator with
ORACLE databases.
* * * * * * * * *
NATURAL GAS AND THE YEAR 2000
Paul Slish
Natural gas is a major energy source in the U.S. Natural gas accounts
for 31% of energy production and 25% of energy consumption in the
U.S. More than 50% of the energy consumed by residential and
commercial customers is supplied. by natural gas. Natural gas provides
41% of the energy used by U.S. industry. 27% of this production
comes from offshore areas.
99% of the natural gas consumed is produced in North America.
There are more than 60 million residential and commercial natural gas
customers in the U.S. This totals to 175,000,000 American consumers.
53% of American homes use natural gas for a total of 59 million. In
the U.S. there are 288,000 producing natural gas wells, 125 natural gas
pipeline companies, and 1200 gas distribution companies. The
transmission and main distribution pipelines total 1,300,000 miles. The
U.S. accounts for 24% of the world's annual natural gas production.
17% of the natural gas consumed in the U.S. is used to produce
electric power. This represents 11% of the electric power generated.
There are basically five segments of the industry: exploration,
production, transmission, storage, and distribution. Obviously, if there is
any significant disruption, even in the short run, to production,
transmission, or distribution of natural gas, it would wreak havoc in the
lives of residential consumers, and to the operations of most of the
commercial and industrial concerns in the U.S. Any lengthy disruption
to either exploration or storage (either incoming or outgoing) would
also wreak havoc to the U.S. economy.
A brief history of the use of natural gas in the U.S. is found at
www.natfuel.com/history.html. The five industry segments will be
discussed with reference to computer systems and the year 2000. The
writer is a senior systems analyst in the information services
department at National Fuel Gas Company of Buffalo, NY. He is not
aware of any web site or other published literature comprehensively
examining the entire natural gas industry in relation to computer
problems as January 1, 2000 approaches. This brief paper is only
exploratory, and is certainly subject to revision and correction if more
information becomes available.
PCs, networks, and servers are widely used by oil and gas exploration
engineers and technicians. The potential problems with PCs as the
calendar crosses over to 01/01/2000 are well documented. Failures in
PCs could hinder exploration efforts. Secondly drilling sites must be
chosen after initial analysis. Drilling rigs, especially offshore rigs,
contain numerous microprocessor controls. Microprocessor controls
are also called process logic controllers (PLCs). They can be
programmable, meaning the software controlling them can be modified,
or the program can be permanently written to the controller. A
permanently written controller is often called an embedded chip. I will
refer to them as PLCs for the remainder of this paper to reduce the
verbiage. Potential problems with PLCs in the oil and gas industries
after reaching January 1, 2000 are documented (click archive, then
click April, 1998) OR (Shemwell, Scott M., Jerry Dake, and Bruce
Friedman, "Will the Millennium Bug Give Your Operations the Flu?",
"World Oil", Houston TX: Gulf Publishing Company, April 1998,
Volume 219, No. 4). In brief, a short term problem with either PCs, or
PLCs in drilling rigs would temporarily hinder or suspend exploration
work. Any long term problem would eventually impact the supply
situation of natural gas. This is a real possibility.
Once a well is drilled, and gas is found in commercially profitable
quantities and sufficient pressure, the well must be put into production.
Production is the second major segment of the natural gas industry.
First the well must be completed. Various control mechanisms must be
installed, and the well must be connected to a gathering line. The
completed well may have various automated (computerized) controls
associated with it. For an offshore well, the drilling platform is
removed and a production platform is installed. Like a drilling platform,
a production platform is equipped with a multitude of PLCs. Also there
is the pipeline transporting the gas from the offshore platform to the
onshore extraction or processing plant. This pipeline runs along the
bottom of the gulf or sea to shore and is not easily accessible. Recall
that 27% of natural gas produced comes from offshore wells. Failures
in offshore production platforms would quickly impact the supply of
natural gas. Here is a brief description of how gas moves from the
well into the transmission system.
The raw natural gas that flows from a well must be cleaned and
treated. A pipe called a gathering line carries the gas from the well to
an extraction unit, which removes such impurities as dust, sulfur, and
water. The gas may then flow to nearby processing plants, which
remove butane, propane, natural gasoline, and other substances not
needed in the fuel. (The World Book Encyclopedia, Chicago: World
Book, Inc., 1988, Vol. 8, pp. 53).
Next let's review transmission and distribution.
The processed natural gas is then fed into underground, long-distance
transmission pipelines, which carry it to cities and towns along their
routes. Gas is sent through transmission pipelines under tremendous
pressures - usually 1000 pounds per square inch (70 kilograms per
square centimeter). The pressure drops along the route because of the
friction of the gas against the pipe walls. It also falls when
communities remove gas. Compressor Stations along the line restore
high pressure and push the gas on to its farthest destination. Many
lines have automatically operated stations that increase or decrease
the pressure to meet the demands of various communities. Gas usually
travels through pipelines at about 15 miles (24 kilometers) per hour...
Inspectors on foot and in airplanes check continually for conditions that
might damage the pipelines... In addition, instruments installed along
pipelines automatically report leaks and other faulty conditions.
In cities and towns, distribution lines carry the gas to consumers.
There are two kinds of distribution lines - mains and individual service
lines. Mains are large pipes connected to the transmission pipelines.
Service lines are smaller pipes that branch out from the mains. The
service lines carry the fuel sold by gas utility companies to homes,
factories, restaurants, hotels, and other buildings. (Ibid. pp. 53,56).
First, the above cited material makes it clear there is considerable use
of automation in the transmission and distribution of natural gas. There
are both instruments (PLCs) installed along the lines, and numerous
PLCs in the compressor stations. If any of these PLCs are involved in
event monitoring, which some are, then they would be logging times
and dates. That makes them susceptible to the millennium bug.
Regulator stations decrease the pressure when gas moves from a main
to a service line in the distribution system. Again date sensitive PLCs
are present in many regulator stations. Also there are larger gas
control centers which make extensive use of PCs, servers and
networks. PCs manufactured as late as 1997 may have date related
problems as January 1, 2000 is reached. What are the implications of
PC failures, or reversions to 1980 or 1984 dates, in a gas control
system come Jan. 1, 2000?
The gas that moves through a pipeline must be measured. It has to be
measured when it enters the transmission system, and it has to be
measured again each time it passes into another company's pipeline.
There are gas measurement computers which obviously have to
measure a volume of natural gas over a time interval. For example,
they would measure something like so many thousands of cubic feet
per second. Are these gas measurement computers year 2000
compliant? If some are not, then there is a major accounting problem
even if the pipeline companies can still successfully move the gas. If a
company cannot properly measure and bill for gas, it could either get
sued in court or possibly even go bankrupt.
PLCs are real time systems currently in operation, and how will we
know they will work correctly when Jan. 1, 2000 arrives? Real time
systems are very difficult to test. You can't take them off-line for
testing, if you need to run them 24 hours a day to maintain your gas
pipeline system. There would have to be sufficient capacity on an
alternate line to shut a line down for testing. Even if a line could be
shut down, it is impossible to advance the date on PLCs where the
software is permanently etched on the chip.
Gas storage faces basically the same issues as transmission and
distribution in relation to PLCs and gas measurement computers.
Measurement definitely has a date sensitivity. Remember, January 1,
2000 will be in the dead of winter, when withdrawals from storage are
essential to maintaining adequate throughput in the pipelines that supply
homes and businesses. At this point I have briefly reviewed the use of
computers in the five major segments of the natural gas industry. A
major issue must now be discussed. No particular transmission pipeline
or distribution company runs its system in isolation from other
pipelines. In fact there is an integrated North American natural gas
production, transmission, storage and distribution system. As noted
earlier there are 1,300,000 miles of transmission and main distribution
pipelines in North America. Gas is moved from the southwestern U.S.
to the highly populated eastern United States by about four major
pipeline companies. The Trans-Canada pipeline ties in with U.S.
pipeline companies in the northern United States. For example,
Trans-Canada ties in with National Fuel's system at Lewiston, NY.
Specifically they meet at the bottom of the Niagara River halfway
across.
Therefore any significant shutdown of the production system would
within a few days severely impact the transmission and distribution
systems. A shutdown in any of the major transmission pipelines would
quickly impact the remainder of the transmission system and the
distribution system. Problems with withdrawals at any significant
number of storage fields in the middle of winter would have a large
impact on the distribution system. With the high level of use of PCs,
networks, servers, and process logic controllers in all segments of the
natural gas industry, the possibility of various failures taking place once
January 1, 2000 is reached is high. The millennium bug could possibly
hit the natural gas production, transmission, distribution, and storage
network quite hard. Why do I come to this conclusion?
As mentioned earlier there are 288,000 gas wells, 125 pipeline
companies, and 1200 distribution companies in the U.S. Who is
coordinating Y2K repairs among all these producers, transmitters, and
distributors? There is no group or managerial body systematically doing
this. The American Gas Association website recently added a page
entitled "Operating and Engineering Year 2000 Issues for members."
But we are just over 19 months from the deadline. It is rather late. The
Interstate Natural Gas Association, and the Gas Research Institute are
both conducting surveys of their members, according to Kathleen
Hirning, the CIO of FERC. Surveys are very initial steps. Some of
these companies may be doing very well in remediating their computer
systems for Y2K compliance. Others, however, may not be. The
question is,who knows? How many pipeline companies need to
experience Y2K related failures, before the overall transmission
system is substantially impacted? Recall that natural gas accounts for
25% of the energy consumed in the U.S. I find it astounding that as of
mid 1998 there is no managerial body comprehensively measuring the
progress of Y2K remediation in the nationwide natural gas industry, let
alone prodding laggard companies into increased action or any action
at all.
Recall also that 17% of natural gas produced is used to generate
electricity. 11% of electric energy is produced in this fashion. Failures
in the natural gas transmission and distribution network could heavily
impact electricity generation. Conversely, the natural gas system could
not be sustained for any length of time if there are long term electrical
power outages. There is backup electricity generation capabilities in
many instances, but it is not designed for long term usage of weeks or
months. At this time, the writer cannot forecast one way or the other
whether the natural gas system will perform reliably come January 1,
2000.
National Fuel Gas (NFG) of Buffalo, NY is an integrated natural gas
company with annual revenues of about $1,200,000,000. NFG
performed an initial analysis of the Y2K problem in 1992, and a
detailed analysis and inventory in 1995. All information systems and
non-information systems (process control) are in the process of
remediation and testing as of this writing. All remediation and testing is
scheduled to be completed by December 31, 1998. Everything is on
schedule now. But what about the rest of the natural gas industry?
garynorth.com |
