Economic Analysis of the Comparative Advantage of Retrofitting a Gas Assist Flare to an Air-Assist Flare for Smokeless Flare

This research delves into exploring alternatives which have comparative economic advantage to un-automated gas-assist flare systems, whilst eliminating or mitigating the adverse consequence of the use of high-pressure gas for enhancing smokeless flaring and to optimize flare systems. According to the Ringelmann theory, unabated smoky flares based on stipulated timeliness should be recorded as flare incidents. It is this undesirability of Oil/Gas facilities to generate smoky flares that has endeared them to providing the most available flare assist systems in their facility. A gas processing facility in Sub-Sahara Africa was considered and the data obtained shows that the facility supports its flare towards smokeless flaring with useful hydrocarbon gas of about 10,120 tons per year. This accounts for about 10% of the total amount of gas flared for this region. This amount of gas can produce over 2000 Megawatt-hour electricity. With an average power consumption of 1000kwh per household, this can sufficiently power about 2000 households which is about what the Ugbomro community in Uvwie Local Government of Delta State-Nigeria holds. Considering the current era where Oil/Gas organizations are aligning to the global energy transition journey, it has become increasingly necessary to cut down on gas emission. Introducing the option of debottlenecking the gas assist flare with air assist flare would not only stop the facility from flaring an additional 10,120 tons of gas yearly, and make this gas useful for power generation, it will also reduce the carbon footprint of this site by about 10%. While achieving these, it will still be very adaptable to solve the problem of smoky flares with a more improved technical efficiency. The estimated total fixed cost of debottlenecking the existing gas assist flare to air assist flare is about 800,000 USD and an estimated 400,000 USD for operational cost. By this debottlenecking, using the Henry Hub Model for gas pricing, this facility will make cost saving of about 1,380,800 USD per year and this value will increase YoY as the facility expands in gas processing towards their nameplate capacity. This indicates a payback period of 1-2 years. Coupled with a reduced gas emission leading to an enhanced Net Zero Emission journey, every Oil/Gas business running the gas assist flare should do this retrofitting and endeavor to unlock this value.