Williams to value oil sands Propane to export Propylene
Williams Energy ( Williams) is planning to expand its existing facility located at Redwater, near Edmonton in Alberta, Canada, to produce polymer-grade propylene.
In Canada, Williams developed a unique expertise to capture and convert all the off-gas by-products of the oil sands production in the upgraders into valuable feedstocks for the petrochemical industry.
The treatment of the oil sands in the upgraders generates quantity of associated products such as natural gas (methane), NGL and olefins.
That is this mixture of oil sands by-products that Williams is interested in for separation, treatment and monetization.
In Fort McMurray, Williams is running a processing facility with a capacity of 14,000 b/d of NGL and olefins mixture to produce:
– Propane
– Propylene
– Butane
– Butylenes
Williams is also proceeding to the construction of an olefins unit to produce 10,000 b/d of:
– Ethane
– Ethylene
In doing so, Williams separates the natural gas from all the other oil sands by-products and return it to the oil sands producer.
The off-gas oil sands by products are then transported via the Boreal pipeline to Williams Redwater facility, near Edmonton in Alberta, for further separation and treatment.
In addition to monetize these NGL and olefins oil sands by-products, this process reduces the emissions of:
– Carbon dioxide (CO²) by 0.2 million t/y
– Sulfur dioxide (SO²) by 1,700 t/y.
Williams to expand Redwater plant with $600 million Propane DeHydrogenation (PDH) unit
From its experience to monetize oil sands off-gas by-products, Williams sees the opportunity to expand its business model downstream in converting its own propane production into high added value propylene.
Williams Redwater plant is already well equipped with fractionation, distribution and storage facilities that would fit perfectly with a propane dehydrogenation (PDH) unit.
This PDH unit would use as feedstock the propane extracted from the Fort McMurray separation plant.
With the Redwater PDH project, Williams is planning $600 to 800 million capital expenditure to build a facility with 1 billion lb/y capacity of propylene.
This new PDH plant should be the first one in Canada and would produce polymer-grade propylene.
This polymer-grade polymer is one of the building blocks of the petrochemical industry to produce plastics for all kinds of applications.
In that perspective Williams is planning to export its propylene production through the US Gulf Coast.
In addition to the propylene, the propane dehydrogenation process generates itself by-products:
– Hydrogen
– Butane/Butylene
– Ethane/Ethylene
Williams will sell the hydrogen on the domestic market in Canada, while the butane/butylene and ethane/ethylene will complete its own production of these by-products directly extracted from the oil sands by-products.
In this Redwater PDH project, William takes advantage of its existing facilities and infrastructures to monetize each and every one by-products at any level of the separation and transformation chain from the first oil sands treatment, what usual PDH units cannot normally do.
Since the main source of supply of these oil sands off-gas by-products resides in the upgraders, Williams intends to replicate Fort Mc Murray experience with the other existing upgraders in Alberta and in projects.
With this oil sands by-products monetization strategy, Williams develops a unique midstream business model fitting perfectly with its core business in gas and NGL pipelines, in addition it leverages directly the profitability of the upgraders operators who then get profits from resources previously burnt and lost in greenhouse gas emissions.
