Content area
Full text
Special to
Pipeline & Gas Journal
The amount of gas transported from the offshore production fields on the Norwegian continental shelf of the North Sea to Continental Europe will exceed 60 billion standard cubic meters by year 2000. This gas is delivered to Germany, Belgium and France through a network of high-pressure subsea gas trunklines operated by Statoil. In year 2000, this complex and interconnected transportation system will exceed 6,ooo km as shown in the map. To account for the gas delivery, metering stations are built on land and offshore for custody transfer and allocation purposes.
In both cases, metering system performance must accord with the contractual terms agreed between seller and buyer, the companies involved and/or requirements set by the national authorities. Such agreement and acceptance are relatively easy to obtain from the parties concerned if the metering stations have been built in accordance with international standards or in accordance with recognized technologies, should standards not be available.
The difficulty in achieving high accurate metering increases when gas produced from different fields having different owners is gathered into a network of trunklines, also with different owners. As a major operator in...