News / Last gas to leave Sullom by sea
SHETLAND’S Sullom Voe oil terminal marks the end of an era this week with the departure of its final load of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) on board the Norwegian tanker Clipper Sky.
LPG tankers used to visit Europe’s largest export terminal once a week during peak production in the mid 1980s, but with the decline in throughput such vessels are rare at Sullom Voe.
This summer sees the completion of terminal operator BP’s £60 million Project Aurora which has replaced miles of rusting pipework with a state of the art gas plant to deal with the 100 tonnes of gas that pass through the plant every day, down from 3,500 tonnes in 1985.
The Clipper Sky will leave Sullom Voe on Thursday with 15,000 tonnes of butane and 8,600 tonnes of propane. Terminal manager Lindsay Boswell will make a presentation to the tanker captain to mark the occasion.
The new gas plant will be fully up and running by August and a large squad of workers have been drafted in to complete the operation and remove the old pipework and flarestacks.
The new gas plant will see 40 fewer people employed at the terminal, but is expected to help keep it going for another 25 years.
Gas will be burned off in the flare stack, be re-injected into crude oil or join the Magnus EOR pipeline to help extract more oil out of old fields in the North Sea.
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