Is the US nearing the next construction boom?

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01.01.2013 | Nichols, L., Gulf Publishing Company, Houston, Texas

US activity will be led by LNG liquefaction and export terminals, along with new and expanded fractionators, ethylene crackers and other petrochemical infrastructure.

Keywords: [construction] [LNG] [US] [GTL] [gasification] [natural gas] [shale gas]

A lingering question for the US, and one that could determine the nation’s energy future, is what to do with the abundance of natural gas from unconventional sources such as domestic shale plays? Revised estimates by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) list recoverable shale gas reserves at around 542 trillion cubic feet (Tcf), and in its Annual Energy Outlook 2012, the EIA projects that US gas production will jump from 21.6 Tcf in 2010 to 26.1 Tcf–34.1 Tcf in 2035. This development could establish the US as the world’s leading gas producer since overtaking Russia in 2009. The abundance of natural gas has driven the price to a point where it may not be economical to drill additional capacity.

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Ryan Kenworth
01.24.2013

In US environmental impacts evaluations and plant safety considerations shall become the main elements driving the design, as they are doing in other countries, like Australia. Technology will have to become safer to allow a real improvement.

Duane Sword
01.22.2013

New facilities will also allow buyers and technical decision makers to consider new technology and methodologies, rather than traditional incumbent approaches. One example is the alternative to gas chromatographs for hydrocarbon composition monitoring. Now there are all-optical, fast-response, low-maintenance analyzers that require no carrier gas (i.e. no helium or hydrogen tanks), no calibration gases (i.e. not a relative method but a direct absolute concentration measurement), and no consumables (i.e. avoidance of lead-acetate, GC columns and the most expensive aspect of a GC is the technical personnel operating and maintaining the system). New facilities opens the door for new and more efficient technology to be adopted.

Gustavo Heins
01.16.2013

That means, will be job for many workers

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Engineers and designers are highly skilled individuals. Forcing them to enter design changes using tables, forms and spreadsheets is unproductive and uneconomical, and it increases the likelihood of human error—this is the way that most instrumentation software systems currently work. For too long, software vendors have denied engineers and designers the simple practicality of a graphical visual engineering interface with “drag and drop” capability and inbuilt intelligence, ensuring changes are automatically replicated into all the associated data and databases.

D. GIBSON, AVEVA

Poll

Which network within crude oil transportation will be most popular in coming years for North American refiners?

Pipeline 89%

Rail 6%

Barge 5%

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