Your dedicated engines in the field need a reliable fuel supply. Your flare stacks have state regulators on your back. There are solutions, one of which is already hard at work in the Marcellus Shale: rigs powered by natural gas engines tied to a virtual network of fit-for-purpose fueling modules.

“If you’re able to show reliable fuel supply, and make it feel no different than diesel, then you’re able to adopt those dedicated natural gas engines, and as you adopt those dedicated natural gas engines, your paybacks become faster, your profitability goes up, you use more gas,” said John Westerheide, general manager of unconventional resources for GE Oil & Gas, at Hart Energy’s recent DUG Bakken and Niobrara conference in Denver. “It compounds on itself once again.”

The company’s two principal engine technologies are Waukesha rich-burn and Jenbacher lean-burn. Weatherford Enterra Inc. employs about 30 Waukesha engines in the Marcellus Shale on 10 Patterson-UTI rigs.

“Those rigs are running field gas, they’re not running (the GE Oil & Gas) Last Mile Fueling solution, which delivers CNG,” Westerheide said. “But those engines can take either Last Mile Fueling solution or field gas.”

GE’s approach was to collaborate with an oilfield partner, Norwegian energy giant Statoil, and develop an understanding of what it would take to fuel operations, drilling rigs and hydraulic fracturing crews. Then it joined with Ferus, a Calgary-based energy services company, to transfer its solutions from the laboratory to the field. The partnership has reduced flare stacks and turned a wasteful, harmful element into a beneficial fuel source through its virtual networks of mobile, deployable “CNG in a Box” and “LNG in a Box” modules and small-scale LNG plants.

“The exciting thing is, because we can land these (CNG in a Box) units in the field and get rid of flare stacks, you’re not talking about 100 miles you have to drive to fill up with CNG,” he said. “You’re talking about five miles, you’re right down the road. Additionally, as the rigs move around the basin, you can pick up those units, and you can move them with the demand. It creates a very flexible virtual network."

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