Ridgeline Midstream gathers dry gas in northeast Pennsylvania through 14 rented compressors, each moving about 9,000 Mcf a day. In August the station averaged 91% runtime. On the monthly operations report, which leads with barrels, that month looked unremarkable.
Why it looked like nothing
The report was built for the parent company's oil assets. Gas shows up in a column of its own, in Mcf, below the line most readers stop at. Nine percent downtime across 14 units is 11,340 Mcf of throughput deferred every day, and nobody on the distribution list thinks in Mcf.
Put it in the same unit as everything else
At the standard 6 Mcf per barrel of oil equivalent, that deferred gas is:
Show the mathHide the mathHow each figure above is worked out, step by step.
Deferred throughput, as BOE1,890 BOE/d
- Gas as BOE11,340 Mcf/d ÷ 6 Mcf per BOE1,890
- Condensate11,340 Mcf/d ÷ 1,000 × 0 bbl/MMcf0
- Total BOE/d1,890 + 0 + 0 bbl/d oil + 0 bbl/d NGLs1,890 BOE/d
Every month57,488 BOE
- Gas as BOE11,340 Mcf/d ÷ 6 Mcf per BOE1,890
- Condensate11,340 Mcf/d ÷ 1,000 × 0 bbl/MMcf0
- Total BOE/d1,890 + 0 + 0 bbl/d oil + 0 bbl/d NGLs1,890
- BOE a month1,890 BOE/d × 365 ÷ 1257,488 BOE
Every year689,850 BOE
- Gas as BOE11,340 Mcf/d ÷ 6 Mcf per BOE1,890
- Condensate11,340 Mcf/d ÷ 1,000 × 0 bbl/MMcf0
- Total BOE/d1,890 + 0 + 0 bbl/d oil + 0 bbl/d NGLs1,890
- BOE a year1,890 BOE/d × 365689,850 BOE
Now it sits next to the oil numbers and reads at its real size. At a realized $2.40 per Mcf it is also about $27,200 a day, roughly $828,000 a month.
What to report instead
- Deferred volume in BOE, next to oil, every month
- The dollar value at realized price, not strip
- Runtime by unit, so the three units doing most of the damage are visible
If your gas carries condensate, the converter adds it in: set the yield in bbl/MMcf and the liquids show up in the total.
- Gas
- 11,340 Mcf/d
- Condensate yield
- 0 bbl/MMcf
- Oil
- 0 bbl/d
- NGLs
- 0 bbl/d
- Mcf per BOE
- 6