The Rising Influence of Rising Affluence

[OakesCS]

I suspect the inadequate infrastructure that Shell refers to extends beyond transportation to get the oil to market. They are looking at injecting H2S rather than flaring. Given the H2S concentrations I see, that seems incredibly inefficient.

It also appears that emulsion transportation and treatment is another problem.

I also wouldn't be surprised if they're thinking they may get hit w carbon capture and storage costs.

From what I've sen of the water reclamation and recycling operations, that's another problem they probably haven't conquered.

They were also counting on piping in condensate to use as diluent. It's conceivable that the condensate producers they were counting on have vaporized.

While I expect better from Shell, I recently encountered an engineer who had designed the surface facilities to handle the H2S stream but neglected to consider mercaptans. Tacking that sort of thing on after the fact gets expensive.