V.V.Babaev, A, V.Lizanets

Ukrniigas, Ukraine

 

Geoethical aspects of hydrocarbon resources treatment and exploitation

 

 

Essentially any human activity as any production impacts the environment either by polluting it with waste products, or by realized or unrealized changes with unforeseen, often, consequences. This refers equally to geology in general and to oil and gas geology in particular, and substantially depends on specialists’ extent of morals and their understanding of the processes taking place on Earth. On this occasion I.Kant /1/ wrote «wonderful relations underlie in the space’s feature and a striking unity - in its immeasurable variety».

V.I.Vernadsky in his turn said:»a living matter is inseparably linked with material energy processes of a definite geological earth’s mantle and its biosphere. Physically, it cannot be independent of it for any minute « /2/. The study of biosphere devised by V.I.Vernadsky is based on dialectical unity, correlation and interdependence of processes taking place in various mantles of the Earth - lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere. On the base of Vernadsky’s conception of the biosphere, a French mathematician and philosopher E.Le Rua in collaboration with the scientist Teilhard de Chardin introduced such a notion as «noosphere» as a contemporary stage of biosphere. The essence of the notion lies in the fact that a man, owing to the development of his mind becomes a powerful geological force at up-to-date conditions. Being himself part of the biosphere man becomes responsible for its condition. Preservation of life on Earth depends upon the extent of morals in man’s behavior, ethicality of his decisions relative to the environment.

The oil and gas complex at all stages of its production: prospecting recovery, treatment, transportation and processing of hydrocarbon products creates great technogeneous loads on the environment and provides a good example of man’s role in the noosphere.

Thus, according to the data of the World Congress on Environment Protection and Development (Rio de Janeiro, 1992) the methane content in the atmosphere has doubled in the last 300 years and its annual increase amounts to 1.5%. Change of the atmosphere content, in the specialists’ view, will cause global rise in temperature.

The pollution of the atmosphere is caused by hydrocarbon, nitrogen, carbon, sulphur oxide, gas condensate steam, hydrogen sulphide, mercaptans and other exhaustions from oil and gas enterprises.

The main sources of air pollution at gas production and processing enterprises are: faulty sealing of the systems of gas and hydrocarbon condensate recovery, transportation and field treatment; utilization of non dehydrated natural gas with non-removed sulphur as a fuel for technological needs, use of opened flare systems during well and pipeline blowing and repair of technological equipment

Under conditions of gas main sealing failure in the course of pipeline cleaning and repair works the major atmosphere pollutant is gas containing methane, ethane, propane, butane, exhaust gas of gas. compressor units (CO2, CO, CH4, NO, NO2, SO2, benzapyren, carbon-black particles), odorant (ethyl-mercaptan).

During gas main blow down the subsurface and surface water, hydrocarbon condensate, mineral, lubricating and compressor oil, methanol, organic acids, and surfactants can contaminate the soil.

Besides hydrocarbon gas, combustion gas of gas compressor units can also be a pollution source. It is well known that in the process of gas-air mixture burning in the combustion chamber of a gas-turbine unit, NO - a toxic substance is produced. Its concentration depends upon the temperature in the combustion zone on the one hand, and cooling rate of combustion products on the other. These conditions to a certain extent depend on the technical state of gas compressor units, 30% of which in Ukraine worked out their designed resource and more than 35% - two thirds of the resource. Pollution of surface and ground water is an extreme environmental hazard. The main pollutants are: industry sewage water containing oil and oil products, heavy metals, chlorine organic compounds, radioactive substances. The most toxic are aromatic hydrocarbons of low boiling temperature (benzol, toluene, xylol and others).

In the course of the last ten years water contamination has sharply increased by synthetic surfactants utilized for washing fluid treatment during oil and gas well drilling, field exploitation and other technological processes.

A considerable amount of water used for technological needs in exploiting oil and gas wells increases surface drain enriched by pollutants and can adversely affect surface and subsurface water /3/.

Each ecosystem - as a part of the Earth’s biosphere - is composed of some components of lithosphere, geophysical sphere (geophysical fields of the Earth and space), geomorphospheres (relief), hydrosphere (surface and subsurface), atmosphere, pedosphere (land resources), phytosphere, zoosphere and social sphere. All of these components in the Earth’s biosphere and in each separate ecosystem are closely related, correlated, inter-conditioned and interdependent, especially at up to-date conditions under the influence of technogeneous man’s activity /4/.

The process of hydrocarbon resource treatment envisages a series of works including seismic survey, electrical and gravity prospecting, structural-prospecting, stratigraphy parameters and exploration well drilling. Each of these stages, especially well drilling, creates a great technogeneous load on the environment and this is not always justified. Thus, the primary task of prospecting and exploration is optimum location of prospecting and exploratory wells and determination of their number. There are a lot of different direct and indirect methods to solve this task. But in practice the location of prospecting and exploratory wells is more often accomplished on the base of seismic surveys only. This increases the wells number, reduces the efficiency of prospecting and exploration and as a result leads to unjustified and unnecessary influence upon the environment.

From our point of view a purely ethical problem takes place here as the optimum solution of the task completely depends upon the extent of morals of specialists fulfilling these works. Conjunctural considerations often underlying the above mentioned problems inevitably increase social tension. Thus, under the conditions of economical crisis in Ukraine financial losses related to each well costing 5-7 million gryvni and giving no positive result, inevitably, directly or indirectly, affect the position of every common taxpayer. Besides, erroneous location of prospecting and exploratory wells leads to incorrect estimation of the territories’ prospects relative to oil and gas presence, and this also affects the inhabitants’ fortunes of entire regions. So geoethics in this case includes not only an ecological aspect but a social one as well.

In the development of hydrocarbon fields the choice of rational development pattern, the process’s control, introduction of efficient methods to increase oil-gas-condensate recovery are of great importance.

The development of oil and gas fields is usually fulfilled accordingly to an approved process-flow diagram or project. The elaboration of such projects is governed by established and accepted calculation methods taking into account geological structure, geological field features, physical and chemical features of beds’ fluids. It is not always possible to take into consideration these features because of the imperfection of the chosen technology and necessity to obtain right away maximum amount of production, i.e. for conjunctural considerations.

One of such cases is given in the work /5/ where it is shown by the example of Kotelevske, West-Berezivske, East-Berezivske and Stepove gas-condensate fields of Ukraine, that failure to take account of a number of factors « of systematic development automatically causes formation of intervals with hydrocarbons worked out to a different extent (in the object being developed), i.e. non-uniform drainage of the object on the one hand and presence of areas undeveloped in general on the other hand». From the point of view of the author an incorrect approach to the selection of a geological-hydrodynamic model of the fields mentioned above causes different water encroachment of development wells located in the near-outline parts of fields being developed and in the near-arch parts as well.

A same problem concerns the recovery of gas condensate at fields of Ukraine. Most of them are being developed at a regime of formation energy depletion /6/. During gas-condensate field development hydrocarbon condensate is formed in productive beds due to changes of thermodynamic conditions and this reduces the phase permeability of the porous space for gas and, consequently, the well production, the final gas recovery factor; the recovery of gas condensate in this case does not exceed 13-40%.

The fulfillment of conjunctural requirements leads to still further losses of oil, gas and gas condensate in the bed. The necessity of the geoethical approach to the solution of such tasks is obvious. Not only principles of bowels and environment protection are disturbed but difficulties in supplying economic structures by necessary energy carriers appear as well.

It is worth noting that relevant laws of bowels and environment protection have been worked out and adopted in Ukraine. Their implementation should avert complicated situations but the formation of enterprises of various forms of property in the oil and gas complex indicates that the new companies do not follow the existing laws, normative acts and, especially, moral principles.

Delivery of hydrocarbon feedstock to the customer by pipelines is also an extreme environmental hazard. Ukraine is one of the largest gases transporting country in the world. Its pipeline system pumping over gas, oil, condensate and their products runs to tens of thousands kilometers, pressure amounts to 7.5 MPa. During long-term exploitation of the pipeline system corrosion, mechanical damages, unqualitative valving and other processes cause accidents that could have serious environmental impacts and repercussions for people.

The increase of working pressure, diameters, a great number of gas main crossings with transport communications (highways, railways, navigable rivers) require guarantee of reliable and safety operation of the pipelines. Realizing the importance of this problem he gas industry enterprises of Ukraine intend measures to ensure reliable operation of the gas transporting system.

Every year complex planned, prophylactic and repair works as well as strength tests of thousands of kilometers of pipelines are being fulfilled. Nevertheless, the accident rate continues to be high. According to the data of Russian JSC «Gazprom» methane blowouts to the atmosphere at Russia’s gas pipelines at different situations amounts to 4 billion m3 a year. A similar situation takes place in Ukraine occasioned by a number of reasons. About a third part of Ukrainian pipelines have worked out their resource, most of them have a polymer filmy insulation which does not provide anticorrosive protection. at the same time the state taxation policy under conditions of economical crisis gives the oil and gas enterprises no financial opportunity to restore the linear part of pipelines and the technological equipment. To this must be added pipeline-sealing failure caused by plunder of the products being transported.

Undoubtedly, all of these problems are of a geoethic character but under conditions of people’s poverty, morals and manners degradation caused by social problems, these problems cannot be solved only by moral approaches. On the other hand moral and virtuous principles concerning the solution of geoethic problems is necessary to develop, especially, as no capital investments are required. Virtue according to I.Kant /7/ is «the ability and firm intention to offer resistance to powerful... enemy of moral views in us».

In this respect studies on geoethics directed at the evaluation of moral’s importance in solving geological tasks seem to be quite actual. I would like to point out that these studies are not important from the point of view, but carry a great educative potential.

 

 

Literature

 

1.    I.Kant - Works, v.1, Moscow, 1963, p.435.

2.    V.I.Vernadsky - Beginning and eternity of life, Moscow, Sov. Russia, 1989.

3.    L.F.Petryashin and oth. - Protection of nature in oil and gas industry, Lviv, Vyshcha Shkola, 1984, p. 185.

4.    O.M.Adamenko - Natural resources management and ecological safety in the fuel-energy complex of the Carpathian region, Nafta i gaz Ukrainy, I.Frankivsk, 2000.

7.        I.I.Litvin - Results of using a new method of increasing gas-condensate recovery at Serpukhovian-Visean objects of Kotelevsko-Berezivska zone, Pytania rozvytku gaz. prom. Ukrainy Issue XXVI, Kharkiv, 1998.

6.    R.M.Kondrat, O.R.Kondrat - Intensification of gas and condensate recovery at the final stage of gas condensate field development., Nafta i gaz Ukrainy, Poltava, 1998, p. 58-59.

7.        I.Kant - Works in six volumes, v.4, part 2, Moscow, 1965, p. 312.