The Dresser-Rand business commissioned its first micro-scale natural gas liquefaction system at the Ten Man liquefied natural gas facility in Pennsylvania
If you’ve read MDN for any length of time, you know how important LNG–liquefied natural gas–is to the future of the Marcellus/Utica. We’re all eagerly awaiting the day Dominion flips the switch on its Cove Point LNG liquefaction facility in Cove Point, Maryland (see Cove Point LNG Now 78% Complete, On Track to Open This Year). Cove Point will condense and ship 1.8 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) of Marcellus/Utica gas to Japan and India. Other big LNG projects are also in the works, several of them on the East Coast of Canada. However, some Marcellus/Utica gas is already getting liquefied and shipped–via the Gulf Coast. In particular from the Cheniere’s Sabine Pass LNG facility in Louisiana (see LNG Slowly Changing the NatGas Game in the Marcellus/Utica). Cove Point, Sabine Pass and other such facilities take years to build and cost billions of dollars. But there’s another kind of LNG, “micro-scale” LNG liquefaction that is taking root in the Marcellus. Dresser-Rand, a subsidiary of German giant Siemens, has commissioned its first small-scale natural gas liquefaction system at the Ten Man LNG facility near Mansfield (Tioga County), PA. The new mini-LNG facility will, according to Dresser-Rand, allow Marcellus driller Frontier Natural Resources “monetize stranded gas assets,” by which we take to mean wells drilled that are not and cannot quickly be connected to a pipeline system. If this catches on, it can be an important alternative for drillers where pipelines are nonexistent or slow in coming…
