The Master Gas System — fueling a nation
主天然气系统-燃料一个国家
The Master Gas System (MGS) was one of the biggest energy projects in Aramco’s history, enabling one of the world’s largest gas markets and transforming the national energy mix toward clean fuel.
主天然气系统（MGS）是阿美历史上最大的能源项目之一，使世界上最大的天然气市场之一成为可能，并将国家能源结构转变为清洁燃料。
丽贝卡·华莱士|2020年10月22日
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The Master Gas System () enables Aramco to derive value from its range of gas deposits, delivering it to consumers to generate cleaner power and develop Saudi Arabia’s chemical industry
主天然气系统（）使沙特阿美能够从其天然气储量中获得价值，将其交付给消费者，以产生更清洁的电力并发展沙特阿拉伯的化学工业 -
Saudi Arabia now has the world’s sixth largest gas market, dramatically reducing the amount of oil used in domestic power production
沙特阿拉伯现在拥有世界第六大天然气市场，大大减少了国内电力生产的石油使用量 -
Our gas flaring status is below 1% and we aim to achieve zero routine flaring by 2030
我们的天然气燃烧状况低于1%，我们的目标是到2030年实现零常规燃烧
From the desolate Rub’ al-Khali desert to the shallow waters of Manifa Bay, the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia in the 1970s was busy with the boom of industry. Aramco’s oil fields were powering a nation and the world, a catalyst for economic growth, and the steady haze of light flashes and columns soaring skywards was, as one employee remembers, “like something out of a Greek mythological story, with eternal fires that burnt day and night.” But Aramco was to put the flares out with its Master Gas System (MGS), harnessing this resource to change the landscape not only of the Company but the country.
从荒凉的鲁卜哈利沙漠到马尼法湾的浅沃茨，上世纪70年代的沙特东部省正因工业的繁荣而忙碌。沙特阿美的油田为一个国家和世界提供动力，是经济增长的催化剂，正如一位员工所记得的那样，闪烁的灯光和高耸入云的柱子所形成的稳定的阴霾“就像希腊神话故事中的东西，永恒的火焰日夜燃烧。但沙特阿美公司将用其主天然气系统（MGS）扑灭火炬，利用这一资源不仅改变了公司的面貌，也改变了国家的面貌。
Lighting the skies 照亮天空
The flare stack is an iconic image of the oil and gas industry. During oil production, associated gas is produced from the reservoir together with the oil. Historically, this gas was considered uneconomic to exploit and was burned off, or flared.
火炬烟囱是石油和天然气行业的标志性形象。在石油开采过程中，伴生气与石油一起从储层中产出。从历史上看，这种气体被认为是不经济的开采和燃烧。
The MGS changed this by capturing and utilizing this gas as a source of energy. Not only did this replace oil that was being used for domestic power generation, but it reduced the CO2 emissions from the flare stacks themselves. As new nonassociated and unconventional gas fields were discovered, they all fed into a common sales gas stream through the MGS for delivery to customers.
MGS通过捕获和利用这种气体作为能源来改变这一点。这不仅取代了用于国内发电的石油，而且还减少了火炬烟囱本身的二氧化碳排放。随着新的非伴生气田和非常规气田的发现，它们都通过MGS进入一个共同的销售气流，交付给客户。
A boom time for Saudi
沙特的繁荣时期
The 1970s was a time of huge economic growth in Saudi Arabia, leading to a greater acceleration in urbanization and industry, a growing consumer economy, and increasing employment opportunities for young Saudis. Nascent industries like petrochemicals needed competitive feedstocks, and the Saudi government was keen to diversify the economy and reduce the costly use of oil as a domestic power source.
20世纪70年代是沙特阿拉伯经济增长的时期，导致城市化和工业加速发展，消费经济不断增长，年轻沙特人的就业机会增加。石油化工等新兴产业需要有竞争力的原料，沙特政府热衷于实现经济多元化，减少石油作为国内能源的昂贵使用。
The easiest solution was to tap into the associated gas being flared off and wasted, and instead use it as a low-cost and cleaner fuel for industrialization. And so, in 1975, Aramco designed, developed, and operated a gas gathering, treating, processing, and transmitting system, which would collect gas from Aramco producing fields and take these to markets to provide fuel and feedstocks for the Kingdom.
最简单的解决方案是利用燃烧和浪费的伴生气，并将其用作工业化的低成本和清洁燃料。因此，在1975年，沙特阿美设计、开发并运营了一个天然气收集、处理、加工和传输系统，该系统将从沙特阿美生产的油田收集天然气，并将其运往市场，为沙特王国提供燃料和原料。
An ambitious engineering project
一个雄心勃勃的工程项目
The was to become one of the most ambitious engineering projects undertaken in the region. At the time, it was unprecedented in scope and cost for the Company, requiring sophisticated equipment, computers, construction methods, and state-of-the-art technology. The scale was huge; Shedgum and ‘Uthmaniyah gas plants each covered 121 hectares (about 160 football fields), utilizing some of the largest gas processing equipment available.
将成为该地区最雄心勃勃的工程项目之一。当时，该公司的规模和成本都是前所未有的，需要先进的设备、计算机、施工方法和最先进的技术。规模庞大，Shedgum和'Uthmaniyah天然气厂各占地121公顷（约160个足球场），使用了一些现有的最大的天然气加工设备。
Aramco’s own publication, The Arabian Sun, captured some of the bustle at the time: the storage yard at ‘Uthmaniyah “groans under mountains of material” while “thousands of men pull cable, spread asphalt, drive cranes, handle jackhammers … assemble, weld, and insulate the interminable pipes, some as narrow as a five-halala coin, some as wide as a Land Rover.” The Arabian Sun, August 27, 1980, detailed the huge quantities of food and drink being consumed by the workers, including 48,000 cups of tea a week.
阿美公司自己的出版物《阿拉伯太阳报》捕捉到了当时的一些喧嚣：“乌特马尼亚”的储存场“在堆积如山的材料下呻吟”，而“数千名男子拉电缆、铺沥青、驾驶起重机、操作手提钻……组装、焊接和绝缘无尽的管道，有些窄如五哈拉拉硬币，有些宽如路虎。”1980年8月27日的《阿拉伯太阳报》详细描述了工人们消耗的大量食物和饮料，包括每周48,000杯茶。
A Master Gas System rising from the desert sands
从沙漠中升起的主燃气系统
Berri Gas Plant was the first milestone, inaugurated in 1977 by King Khalid bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, and when fully on stream recovered about 800,000 barrels per day of natural gas liquids (NGL) — an amount at the time equivalent to one-half the daily energy needs of Italy.
Berri天然气厂是第一个里程碑，由国王Khalid bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud于1977年落成，当完全投产时，每天回收约80万桶天然气液体（NGL）-当时相当于意大利每日能源需求的一半。
By 1981, all initial operational facilities were functioning: a system comprised of gleaming pipes taking raw gas to plants for separation and purification, towers, compressor stations that maintained sufficient pressure in the pipelines, storage, loading facilities for extracted gas liquids, and long trunk pipelines taking the sales gas to market, crisscrossing the sun scorched landscape.
到1981年，所有的初始运营设施都在运作：一个由闪闪发光的管道组成的系统，将原料气输送到工厂进行分离和净化，塔，压缩机站，保持管道中足够的压力，储存，提取气体液体的装载设施，以及将销售气体输送到市场的长干线管道，纵横交错的太阳烧焦的景观。
By 1986 the had been expanded to include offshore fields, and Aramco now had the capacity to produce up to 2 billion standard cubic feet per day (scfd).
到1986年，已经扩大到包括海上油田，阿美公司现在有能力每天生产20亿标准立方英尺（scfd）。
Over 40 years later, the now enables the Company to utilize all the gas it produces domestically, with the main consumers being the power generation industry, followed by petrochemical and refining industries, cement and desalination plants, and fertilizer and steel-making facilities.
40多年后，现在使公司能够利用其国内生产的所有天然气，主要消费者是发电行业，其次是石化和炼油行业，水泥和海水淡化厂以及化肥和炼钢设施。
The total length pipeline in service, ready for commissioning, or decommissioned, is 3,850km, and pipelines under construction totals an additional 1,075km.
Expanding the Master Gas System
To meet the Kingdom’s increased energy demand, Aramco has continued to expand the . Hawiyah Gas Plant, completed in 2001, was the first plant to be built exclusively to capture nonassociated gas from a gas reservoir rather than produced alongside oil. Together with the others that followed — Haradh, Wasit, and Fadhili — it represented the importance being placed on developing the Kingdom’s gas resources.
The next phase will increase the total MGS network capacity to 12.5 billion scfd (more than the annual gas consumption of the U.K. and France combined), adding 821km of additional pipeline across the East-West Pipeline corridor, and adding one more gas compression plant. As gas production grows, the Kingdom may also export natural gas to capture additional revenues.
One of the lowest flaring intensities in the world
Although the has all but eliminated associated gas flaring, removing 100 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent every year since it was established, some “routine flaring” is still necessary, such as for venting for safety reasons. Aramco are world leaders in mitigating routine flaring and plan to reduce this to zero by 2030. The Company already has one of the lowest rates in the industry.
This is thanks to a number of industry-leading initiatives and zero routine flaring technology such as the Flaring Monitoring System, which uses Fourth Industrial Revolution technology to monitor and mitigate flaring in real time. Aramco also established a Leak Detection and Repair program to accurately measure and respond to methane emissions, installed flare gas recovery systems, and applied stringent engineering maintenance standards on the equipment used across our operations.
Aramco also recently partnered with a flare company that will manufacture and distribute an innovative smokeless flare technology, invented by an Aramco engineer, Mazen M. Mashour. The High-Pressure Air Assist System retrofits over existing flare stacks with efficiency and speed, helping to reduce emissions further.
Zero Routine Flaring 2030
In 2015, Aramco was recognized by the World Bank as having one of the lowest flaring intensities in the industry; to date, Aramco’s flaring intensity remains at less than 1%. The Company’s Flare Minimization Program is already progressing toward zero routine flaring, and in November 2019 Aramco joined the World Bank initiative Zero Routine Flaring 2030, where, as an exemplar, will be sharing best practices in flare minimization with the industry.
A masterful and enduring energy system
Thanks to the MGS, the Kingdom now has a large and growing gas industry. It has reduced the amount of oil needed for domestic power generation — with both economic and carbon emissions benefits — and has accelerated the Company’s downstream strategy to make Aramco the world’s largest integrated oil and gas company, creating value across the hydrocarbon chain. Since its inception, Aramco has also recovered close to 99 per cent of the total gas produced, while reducing carbon dioxide emissions by more than 98 million metric tons per annum.
From sand dunes to lava fields, and through the rugged mountains of Hijaz, the MGS will continue to reach demand centers across the country, providing clean fuel and feedstocks to the nation. Thanks to the far-sighted planners who envisaged an MGS all those years ago, Saudi Arabia will continue to maximize the value of its hydrocarbons in the most responsible and sustainable manner - long into the future.
Glossary of terms
Associated Gas
Natural gas found in an oil reservoir that is produced alongside the oil being extracted.
Flaring
The act of burning excess gas for operational or commercial reasons.
Routine flaring
Even though most of the associated gas is now captured within the MGS, some flaring remains necessary for safety reasons, reservoir management, or because it would be uneconomic to capture. This is called routine flaring.
Nonassociated Gas
Gas taken from predominantly gas reservoirs rather than being a byproduct of oil production.
Sales gas
Treated and dried gas, with water, gas liquids and impurities removed, that is then transported to customers via the MGS.
Wet gas
Natural gas emerging from the production well, either AG or NAG, containing natural gas liquids; for example, propane and butane.
Feedstock
Raw material used to supply industrial processes.
GOSP
Gas-Oil Separation Plant – the facility that separates wellhead fluids into stabilized gas or oil.
Unconventional Gas
Gas in shale or tight (nonporous) formations, which requires different production techniques, for example hydraulic fracturing (fracking), to conventional drilling methods.
