Since several years there is an intention in Poland to monetize the natural gas from marginal gas fields which are not connected to the national grid for many reasons especially for small gas deposits or they are geographically isolated, their production is declining or the gas is poor quality.
An assessment carried out gives for the natural gas stranded potential the figures from 0.7 to 0.9 Tcf, including off-shore marginal deposits in Baltic Sea.
Several options of these gas fields utilization have been taken into consideration and for moving these gas stranded reserves to the Polish market.
Among several solutions four main are regarded as the most feasible:
for small and medium size CHP generation units for local uses,
for Natural Gas Vehicles (NGV),
for LNG production in small scale projects, and
for Gas-to-Liquids (GTL) process plants producing Diesel Oil and/or kerosene especially in S-E part of the country where small size oil refining plants are existing and can use very pure D.O. or kerosene for blending.
Mini co-generation, NGV and LNG have been chosen as the priority options but GLT can be also envisaged in some specific cases as a new niche for natural gas.
While reviewing the existing marginal gas fields in Poland, determining the economics of envisaged solutions, comparing the economic indicators as break even gas values at the plant inlet and optimized size of the plants, we will finely select and recommend appropriate natural gas conversion methods which permit to move the natural gas stranded reserves to market in Poland.
Very substantial decreasing of gas consumption mainly in the industrial sector during the transition period of national economy coupled with improving of gas utilization efficiency of all categories of consumers has urged Polish Gas Industry on searching the new niches for natural gas uses. This process would have been accelerated through the existing of the indigenous natural gas fields including stranded gas reserves.
With the annual consumption of about 11 Bm3 (388 Bcf) Poland is quite well endowed with own natural gas resources and could have covered if needed about half of her present total demand.
The proven gas reserves represent approx. 126 Bm3 (3.6 Tcf), of two kinds of natural gas: high methane natural gas (HMNG) and low methane natural gas (LMNG) containing average 71% of methane totaling (in volume) 150.46 Bm3 (4.32 Tcf) of natural gas. Only approx. 100 Bm3 are economically recoverable. The developed gas fields produced last year 2001 approx. 4.1 Bm3 of HMNG and covered approx. 32% of total country gas demand. There are good prospects for new discoveries which can increase in incoming years the proven gas reserves up to 171 Bm3. Potential BLOCK 3 - - FORUM 15 109 MOVING NATURAL GA