As shale well production declines, the Karnes County operations are using artificial lifting technologies to sustain production. Rather than installing independent compressors at each well-site facility, the team developed a different approach to reduce the environmental footprint.

The centralized gas lift project identified that an existing, but no longer used, underground pipeline and one centralized compressor could do the work of up to 28 well-site compressors.

The centralized solution not only reduces noise and creates greenhouse gas and nitric oxide emissions savings, it also produces less waste, removes additional potential operational safety hazards associated with rotating equipment and natural gas engines, and eliminates the environmental impact of cranes, man baskets, telehandlers and other pieces of equipment.

The idea was initially raised by field employees in response to an operational issue, but was quickly developed and implemented by a cross-functional team, including engineering, operations, marketing, projects and HSEC. While this project repurposed no longer used equipment at an existing operation, recent modelling has shown that a centralized gas-lift approach would also be cost effective for new operations.