Mobile natural gas project is being called nation’s most complex
“Out of service” didn’t really mean out of service for residents in three northern New Mexico towns whose natural gas pipeline was recently scheduled for regular maintenance.
To keep its customers’ service uninterrupted, CenterPoint Energy’s Mobile Energy Solutions™, or MES, undertook a large-scale mobile natural gas project to supply gas to homes and businesses while the pipeline was undergoing maintenance.
Compressed natural gas and liquefied natural gas provided the natural gas supply for the New Mexico project over three days, a typical time frame for temporary natural gas during a planned project like this, according to the utility.
Twenty-five homes were served individually using small 2 Mcf farm tap trailers; three sites were served with CNG tube trailers and one site with high-pressure, high-flow LNG.
“The unique thing about this project is that it included 29 injection points—all running at the same time,” James Hulse, director of CenterPoint Energy Intrastate Pipelines and MES, told American Gas. “Typically, these types of projects only include a single injection point.”
The LNG site was located in an area that required intense coordination with pipeline operations, town residents and local authorities, such as police and fire departments and city officials, he said.
Because of all these factors, this was possibly the most complex mobile natural gas project ever undertaken, Hulse said.
MES performs more than 100 projects annually all over the continental United States for customers, which include transmission pipeline operators, distribution pipeline operators, commercial/industrial facilities, and equipment testing and commissioning.
“MES services assist with planned pipeline integrity, unplanned outages such as pipeline failures or natural disasters, and peak demand usually tied to cold weather,” Hulse said, noting that LNG or CNG can boost system pressures to avoid losing flow to the ends of a system, to avoid curtailing interruptible transport customers or to avoid the high cost of exceeding maximum daily quantity during peak winter times.